invariably honoured with a call before the curtain. On such occasions,
too, they may fairly be entitled to considerable latitude in various
ways, as, for instance, in their own selection of the programme for
that evening. Notwithstanding this, they should not suffer themselves
to infringe the ordinary regulations of the establishment. Not very
long ago, a star _prima donna_ of the very first magnitude, when taking
her benefit at the Imperial Opera, St Petersburg, found herself called
before the curtain more than twenty consecutive times. In the end
she occupied the centre of the stage, and addressed her enthusiastic
patrons a few words in the Russian language, then offered to show
her gratitude for their favours by singing them a song in their own
tongue. This was received with rapturous applause; but judge of her
surprise when, after retiring from the stage, the management fined her
two thousand francs for addressing the audience without permission!
The proceeds of her benefit were thus considerably reduced; and her
experience was only in one degree removed from that of the French
pantomimist and dancer, as related by Charles Kemble. This individual
was in the habit of taking a benefit at regular intervals, but always
with a loss. One night, however, he came before the curtain with a
beaming countenance, and after a polite bow, he acknowledged his thanks
in these terms: ‘Dear public, moche oblige; very good benefice; only
lose half a crown dis time. _I come again!_’
At an American theatre, an actor once took his benefit, and selected
as the play for the occasion, _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. The company being
small, he found it necessary not only to subject several of the
incidental characters to being doubled—that is, one actor to sustain
two different characters in the same piece, rapidly changing his
costume from one to the other as occasion requires—but he also accepted
a double himself. His was that of Sambo with St Clair. St Clair
appears in one act, and Sambo in the next. Having won considerable
honours as the first individual, the actor, directly the curtain had
descended, hurried away to his dressing-room to prepare in all haste
his toilet and costume for Sambo. His face and hands had of course to
be blacked; and in the midst of this operation of applying the burnt
cork, the prompter entered his room to announce that the audience were
uproarious for him to appear before the curtain. ‘But I can’t,’ he
exclaimed; ‘it is impossible; I’m just making up for Sambo!’ Nothing,
however, would satisfy his patrons short of responding to his call; so
boisterously demanded, that, without his compliance, the performance
could not possibly proceed. At length our hero made his appearance.
But the audience were scarcely prepared to receive him in his altered
person, and, failing to recognise the metamorphosed St Clair in the
half-made-up Sambo, they shouted: ‘Go away! Who sent for you?’
Floral offerings are, of course, pleasantly associated with artistes’
benefits, and long may they so continue. The Emperor Nero, it is
said, always provided the Roman spectators with the thousand-and-one
bouquets which were thrown at his feet when he occupied the stage. But
bouquets _voluntarily_ offered are worthy to be prized very highly.
Not very long ago, Mr Edward Terry, when taking his leave of an Irish
audience, was honoured with the reception of a beautiful floral wreath,
which must have been infinitely more acceptable than that wreath
of _immortelles_ which some insulting ruffian cast at the feet of
Mademoiselle Favart, at a French theatre, a few years ago, in order
to indicate that her age had placed her beyond the power of playing
youthful parts. Had she been composed of the same metal as was the
actor in the following example, she would have enjoyed the opportunity
presented of paying the wretch back in his own coin. The story may be
accepted as true.
At the close of his own benefit performance, a certain favourite
comedian was called before the curtain at a theatre in Vienna. In the
midst of a shower of bouquets, some insulting individual threw a bunch
of vegetables on the stage. Very complacently the _bénéficier_, having
marked from what portion of the house it had proceeded, picked up the
article, and said: ‘We have here an interesting collection of carrots
and turnips. From my slight knowledge of natural history, I believe
this to be the proper food for asses; I therefore return it to its
owner, for who knows in these hard times he may be in want of such a
meal in the morning!’ With these words, he threw the object whence it
came; and the individual being discovered, was immediately expelled
from the theatre amid mingled hisses and applause.
THE MINER’S PARTNER.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
There was a good deal of excitement in the mining camps at and near
Flume City, which, as every mining reader knows, was prominent among
the gold-diggings, and gold-washings also, of Colorado twenty years
ago. A meeting of miners was being held at the largest building in
the city—a wooden shed, which called itself a restaurant, at which
there were assembled some forty or fifty men, rough-looking, roughly
clad, and armed with revolver and knife, although no intention existed
of using such weapons at this gathering. The assembly, indeed, had
been called together with an object calculated to promote union and
comradeship—to assist in maintaining individual rights and to support
the law generally.
There was a president, of course, and his discourse, if not polished,
was much to the point. ‘I reckon,’ he said, after the meeting had
lasted perhaps an hour, and several speeches had been made, with a good
deal of shouting in the way of approval—‘I reckon that the citizens who
have spoken are about right. We have got some traitors among us, and
that’s where the worst comes in. It wasn’t by chance that any outside
loafer knew just when to steal the washings at the Long Placer last
night, or that Scotch Ned was sent away when the stamp-mill was broken.
We know who broke the mill—it was Bill Dobell. But who told him to come
in then? And who could have known that the Kentucky boys at the Long
Placer had got the best washings they had seen this year? Who could
have known that but one among us?’
The president said much more to this effect; but the remainder of his
speech, with the various orations which followed, need not be given, as
we have shown what was the nature of the excitement which had called
the miners into solemn conclave.
The language used was odd and quaint enough; to many it would have
sounded absurd in its phraseology; but no fault could have been found
with the matter. That was direct and shrewd, and evinced a strong
determination to put down the mischief which was making itself felt.
At the conclusion of a pithy harangue, in which the speaker urged
vigorous and brief proceedings against any one detected in such
unpardonable conduct, or reasonably suspected of complicity in
the crime—for robbing the troughs in a mining country is looked
upon as worse than murder, and is considered to be quite as bad as
horse-stealing—a voice exclaimed: ‘You air right, colonel!’
Every one started at the sound, and looked in the direction of the
speaker, who, having recently joined the meeting, with several others,
stood near the door. A dozen men whispered to their next neighbours:
‘Why, it is Rube Steele!’ And significant glances were exchanged.
‘I thought the other day there was Injuns lying around to thieve,’
continued the man; ‘so, when’——
‘You told us so, Rube,’ interrupted the president; ‘and the Kentucky
boys from the Long Placer came into committee on the subject; and their
troughs were robbed while they were gone. You know _that_, I estimate?’
A murmur as of approval of the president’s language ran through the
meeting. Rube noted this, but it did not disturb him. A peculiarly
sinister glance which he threw around him was perhaps natural to his
not greatly attractive features.
‘Yes; I expect I know that; and I expect that I know the tale about
the Injuns was a fraud,’ returned Rube. Something like a sarcastically
approving laugh ran through the meeting at these words; but the speaker
continued, without appearing to notice it: ‘That stranger from San
Francisco was the man who brought the news. You believed him; so did I.’
‘We believed you, Rube; you said the man was reliable,’ again
interrupted the president.
‘That is so,’ replied Rube. ‘He brought messages from leading Frisco
citizens, men known to me, and so I believed him. But I tell you he is
no good; and he has gone off with nigh upon three thousand dollars in
gold-dust which I trusted to him. He brought me an order from Ben, my
pardner, to say he was to have the dust; and though I did not like the
idea, I parted with it. And on coming into camp and asking Ben about
it, I find he never gave any order at all. And it is my belief that
this is the man who robbed the washings at the Kentucky boys’ placer.’
‘And where is Ben?’ began the president, who would probably have said
more, but that a man burst hastily into the saloon as the question was
asked, and shouted in answer: ‘Here! Here is Reuben Steele’s pardner.
Who wants him?’
‘We want you to hear what has been said,’ returned the president, ‘and
to give us your opinion about Californy Jones—the stranger who was
introduced by your pardner, but who, Rube now says, is the man who
robbed the placer, and has robbed him of three thousand dollars.’
‘I can’t say anything about the placer; maybe Rube knows more about
that than I do,’ replied the new-comer. ‘But the man has gone off with
three thousand dollars; that’s a sure fact; and as Rube gave him the
dust, it’s a sure fact too, he knows more about that than I do.’
‘I know no more than yourself,’ retorted Rube. ‘The man produced an
order from you. I could not tell that it was a forgery, and you have
always considered yourself as the boss of our outfit.’
‘Wal, gentlemen, and Mr President,’ continued Ben, ‘I can tell you
we have got murderers among us. Yes, gentlemen, that is so—real
cold-blooded murderers, that will lie in wait for honest, law-abiding
citizens and shoot them from behind rocks.’
A louder murmur ran through the assembly here; and the president asked
Ben his meaning.
‘My meaning is this,’ continued Ben. ‘You know I am clearing out, and
shall leave the camp in a day or two, so that we are realising all our
property, and this gold-dust was a part of what I am going East with.
So, I kinder felt like riled at losing it; and when my pardner told me,
as cool as maybe, that he concluded this stranger had vamoosed with my
dust’——
‘And mine!’ interjected Rube.
‘Wal, let every man speak of his own business,’ returned Ben, who was
evidently in anything but a good temper. ‘I say he had cleared out
with mine, anyhow; and I was riled, I tell you. But at that minute, I
saw, crossing the Mule Back Ridge, two men on horseback. The Ridge is
distant a good piece; but I could swear one was that stranger. “Send
some of the boys on,” said I to Rube. “I shall go through the cañon, so
shall meet them. They must cross there, if they don’t mean to go into
the mountains.” And I was sure they did not want the mountain road. So
I sot off. But I was waited for. There are as bad men left in the camp
as have gone out of it; and at the very entrance of the cañon, when
them horsemen must have been a good two miles away, some desperadoes
fired at me from behind a rock. There was more than one shot fired
at the same time, I know; and—see here, Mr President!—they took good
aim.’ As he said this, he threw off his long outer coat, and handed it
to the president, who, after a momentary examination, held it up, and
exhibited an unmistakable bullet-hole in the skirt.
‘That was near—that is a fact!’ exclaimed the president. ‘And what did
you do then?’
‘I turned back,’ said Ben. ‘It was of no use my pushing on alone, with
the rocks lined with murderers, with men who expected me, and were in
league with Californy Jones.’
‘And where was Rube?’ asked the president.
‘I was at the head of a bunch of boys of the right sort, seven or eight
of them, that I had looked up in the camp. They are here now: Long Sim,
Missouri Rob, Major Dimey and friend, with some others, all first-class
citizens.’
An assenting exclamation from each of those he named confirmed the
speaker.
‘I could not do more than that,’ continued Rube. ‘And when I found my
pardner on the return-track, it was no use my proceeding. I came back
to the city, and then right away to this here convention.’
‘I could have raised twice the force in a quarter of the time he took!’
cried Ben, intercepting some remark which it was evident the president
was about to make. ‘And why I did not come straight here was because
there was something in my tent I thought I had best look after. I had
left my tent in the care of a friend; but you don’t know what may
happen, with such loafers and scoundrels hanging around.’
‘Wal, fellow-citizens,’ said the president, ‘this convention didn’t
assemble, I reckon, to hear the rights of any difference between two
pardners; and it ain’t our business nohow. We are here to discuss the
existence of thieves and scallawags amongst us, and to decide upon the
beet means of clearing them out—that is all.’
Thus recalled to business, the assembly resumed its former discussion,
and the quarrel between the partners was not again openly referred
to; but it coloured all that was said, and many remarks upon it were
made in the body of the meeting. It was clear that public feeling was
much against Rube Steele, although a few of those present were his
partisans; but these latter appeared to consist only of the ‘bunch’
of citizens he had referred to, and were not altogether free from
suspicion themselves.
The gathering separated without having come to any formal resolve,
beyond appointing a few of their members to act in committee and to
decide what steps should be taken; but as it was notorious that each of
the chosen ones was a leader among the Regulators, as they were once
called—or the Vigilantes, to use their now familiar Spanish name—there
was probably more significance in their appointment than at first
appeared.
For that night at anyrate no fresh outrages were apprehended; the
thieves, whoever they were, possessed information too prompt and too
certain to allow them to venture on a renewal of their attempts during
the excitement and watchfulness which would prevail for a time in the
vicinity of Flume City.
In its neighbourhood, few persons were abroad after nightfall; it was
dangerous, indeed, for any one to approach a tent without making his
presence loudly known; a shot would probably be the first intimation
that he was trespassing on dangerous ground; while a few of the miners
possessed large and savage dogs, which would be loosed on hearing
a footstep near the tent. So those who had business which led them
abroad, were careful to confine themselves to the main street of Flume
City, if such a title could fitly be applied to the straggling avenue
which ran from end to end of the place. But spite of these drawbacks, a
few persons were moving in the environs of the city, and even at a good
distance beyond its boundaries, dark though the night was, and only
relieved from utter gloom by the starlight, for moon there was none.
One man who was going towards the town, stopped suddenly, as his quick
ear caught the sound of an approaching footstep, and with the caution
of one accustomed to frontier-life, drew himself up by the side of one
of the very few trees which remained in the vicinity of Flume City, so
that in the obscurity it was almost impossible for any passing eye to
detect him. The next instant a single man hurried by, passing between
the first comer and the starry sky, so that his figure was visible
with tolerable distinctness to the concealed watcher. This second man
did not look to the right or left—it would have been almost impossible
for him to detect the spy, had he done so—but went quickly on in a
direction which seemed to surprise the hidden observer.
‘What can he want there?’ exclaimed the latter, stepping from his
hiding-place, when the other had fairly gone past. ‘There ain’t no
shanties nor no living soul in that direction. It was surely Rube
Steele; and without he has gone crazy, I can’t fix anyhow why he should
be going towards the cañon after nightfall. I will see where he _is_
going; and if he has turned crazy, I may help him; and if not, I shall
find out what he wants in the mountain pass.
He was moving carefully but quickly in the direction the other had
taken, while he was muttering these disinterested sentiments; and
although he could only see the figure he followed, at intervals, when
the man climbed a ledge and stood for an instant in relief against
the sky, yet there was no difficulty in the pursuit. He could hear
his steps as they disturbed the loose stones which strewed the way,
and knew besides, that in the wild spot which they had reached, there
was no means of turning to the right or left, so that he could not
easily miss the chase. Presently the tread of the foremost man became
slower, and the pursuer, as a matter of course, moved at a slower rate
also—slower and slower still, until the former stopped, or only moved
about the same spot of ground.
‘What on airth is he going to do?’ muttered the other man. ‘It’s so
dark—for he is right under the shadow of Big Loaf Rock—that he can’t
see to dig, nor hunt after any buried—— Wal! that means something!’
This exclamation was caused by a low whistle which Rube Steele—if
indeed it were that person—suddenly gave. This was repeated, and
then answered from a distance. ‘I feel like seeing the end of this,’
continued the spy; ‘and I mean to.’
Acting upon this determination, he crawled carefully forward, for he
was too near to venture upon standing upright; and moreover, as the
answering whistle had proved that others were in the neighbourhood,
he was compelled to be on his guard against discovery from other
quarters. His quick ear soon caught the sound of an approaching tread,
and directly after, he heard words spoken. The spy’s curiosity was
now raised tenfold, especially as one of the two men who were now, as
he well knew, close to him, struck a match to light his pipe, and the
momentary flash showed him both figures in a brief glimpse. They were
unluckily placed with their backs towards him, so that he could not
see their features. He now felt confident that the first one was Rube
Steele, and that the second was not entirely unknown to him, but more
than this he could not tell.
This was terribly tantalising; and after the brief illumination of the
match, a more impenetrable darkness seemed to have settled upon the
pass and the rocks around; so, at all hazards, he resolved to get still
nearer. He was perhaps a little unguarded in his eagerness, and made
some slight noise, and it is certain that he had not calculated all the
hazards which might environ him, for a low fierce growl showed that a
dog was with the men, and the spy shuddered with horror as he heard the
sound.
‘Did you hear anything?’ said a harsh voice. ‘The dog would not have
growled like that, unless some one was hanging around.’
‘Nonsense!’ returned the other; and the voice was certainly the voice
of Rube Steele. ‘He heard a jack-rabbit, perhaps, or scented a polecat.
I reckon there ain’t a soul within a league of this cañon to-night. The
miners are all at Flume City, and the Indians have left the district
for more than a week past.’
‘You may be right,’ returned the first speaker. ‘But the dog is uneasy,
and I never knew him give them signs for game or venison; no, nor for
Injun neither. I should have said there was a white man near. But we
air a little too much in the line of the main pass to show a light,
which we must do. Come behind this rock.—Good dog!—mind ’em!’ These
last words were of course addressed to the dog, which had continued to
growl at intervals while his master was speaking, although the unseen
watcher had lain as still as death. The animal was apparently soothed
by being thus noticed, and probably followed the men, whose footsteps
could be heard as they removed to the proposed cover behind the Big
Loaf Rock.
The spy had no inclination to follow them to learn more, but crawled
carefully and noiselessly over the ground until he was at a safe
distance from the pass; so far, indeed, that he judged that even the
acute ears and scent of the dog could not detect him when he rose, and
hurried in the direction of the city as fast as his legs could carry
him.
On the outskirts, he knocked at the door of a shanty, a log-built hut
with earthen floor, such as the Mexican peasantry, and even their
betters, often reside in; and in answer to a gruff challenge from
within—for the inmates were in bed, or stretched on such pallets as
served for beds—he returned an answer which seemed to satisfy the
questioner, for after a little more gruff grumbling, the door was
opened, and he was admitted.
In answer to his inquiry, the gruff voice said: ‘No; nary drop of
anything but water; ye kin have that. Your voice sounds all of a
tremble, Absalom; and if ye don’t get shot over the cards or drown
yourself, I guess ye won’t last long as a miner, anyhow.’
Absalom, as he was called, hesitated for a moment, as though about to
say something in his defence, but eventually decided on making no reply
to this rather unpleasant speech, and threw himself down on a buffalo
skin which the other man pushed towards him. No further conversation
took place, and the shanty was as dark and silent as were the remainder
of the scattered dwellings on the outskirts of Flume City.
CURIOSITIES OF THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
The first curiosity of the electric light was of course its discovery
in 1802 by Humphry Davy, then an assistant-lecturer at the Royal
Institution. With one of the new batteries which Volta had invented
two years before, Davy was surprised to get a brilliant white light
when the poles of the battery were joined through two pieces of carbon.
Later on, his astonishment was increased when he found how intensely
hot was this ‘arch’ of carbon light—the hottest known artificial
source. ‘Platinum,’ he wrote, ‘was melted as readily as is wax in the
flame of a common candle; quartz, the sapphire, magnesia, lime, all
entered into fusion.’ Even the diamond swells out into a black mass
in the electric arc, and carbon itself has been known to soften. Dr
Siemens, as is well known, utilised this fervent heat to fuse metals
in a crucible. With the arc from a dynamo capable of giving a light
of five thousand candles, he fused fifteen pounds of broken files in
as many minutes. Indeed, the temperature of the arc ranges from two
thousand to five thousand degrees Centigrade. Another curiosity of
the arc is that it can be shown in water or other liquids without
quenching. Liquids have a diffusive action on the light; and a globule
of fused oxide of iron between platinum wires conveying the current,
produces a very fine golden light. The fused plaster of Paris between
the carbons of the Jablochkoff candle also forms a brilliant source of
light in the arc; as does the marble separator which answers the same
purpose in the _lampe soleil_. Indeed, this white-hot marble, rendered
luminous by the arc, gives out a mellow radiance so closely resembling
sunshine as to give the lamp its name. Such a light is very suitable
for illuminating picture-galleries.
Electric light is also produced by sending a discharge through vacuum
tubes like those of Geissler; and the varied colours thus produced
are exceedingly pretty. Phosphorescent substances, too, such as the
sulphide of barium, or the platino-barium cyanide, become highly
luminous when inclosed in a tube and traversed by the electric current.