Taking the Chances.

ACT I.

MR. POMEROY, a Preposterous Uncle, who regards his nephew, PETER, as a desirable person. "My dear PETER will he here in a few moments. His presence will be a real blessing."

MRS. POMEROY. "I am sorry to hear it. He breaks furniture and things, and I don't like him."

Enter IRRELEVANT PEOPLE, who make unnecessary remarks, and obviously exist only to meet PETER. Finally PETER enters, in butternut clothing and a condition of chronic moral perfection.

PETER. "Jewhillikins! Haow de du, Unkil? Haow are ye, Aunt DEB? Haow is everybody? Our pigs and chickens and garden-sass is all doin' well." —Falls on a chair.

PREPOSTEROUS UNCLE. "Dear, noble, manly fellow."

EVERYBODY ELSE. "Unbearable brute."

Enter BLANCHE POMEROY. "Do I see my dear cousin? I am glad to see you, but please don't tear all of my dress to pieces."

PETER. "Jewhillikins!" "You used to not to mind abaout havin' your frock torn when you was up at Graniteville. But I s'pose society has sp'iled you."

Enter PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN, and whispers to BLANCHE—"To-night you must fly with me. We have not a moment to lose."

PETER. "Jewhillikins! That is the chap that deserted his wife in Graniteville? I'll fix him."

PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN. "What do I see? A virtuous rustic? Confusion! Can he suspect me?"

PETER devotes himself to the virtuous task of insulting every person in the room, thereby proving how much superior a cow-boy from New Hampshire is to the wretched resident of the city, whom fate has made a base and villainous gentleman. The PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN goes through with a complicated fit of St. Vitus's Dance, by way of preserving a cool exterior, and thus allaying the suspicions of PETER. Various TEDIOUS PEOPLE enter and converse tediously with the IRRELEVANT PEOPLE. After a time the stage-carpenters suddenly decide to lower the curtain, and thus put an end to an act that might otherwise go on forever.

ACT II.

Enter PETER. "Jewhillikins! This is a nice garden. What pesky villains all these people must be, considerin' that they wear good clothes and don't break the furnitoor. There's that chap that deserted his wife. I'll fix him."—Hides himself in an arbor.

Enter PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN.—"Confusion! Can the bumpkin suspect me? In order to avert suspicion, I will confide everything to the friendly air."—Relates his past life and future plans, at the top of his lungs, and then returns to the house.

Enter PREPOSTEROUS UNCLE, and various TEDIOUS PEOPLE, who all want to marry BLANCHE. They converse tediously and go away again. Applause! Enter BLANCHE and PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN.

PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN.—"Confusion! Can the bumpkin suspect me? BLANCHE, we must fly to-night. Not a moment is to be lost."

Re-enter PETER. "Jewhillikins! BLANCHE, I want to talk a spell with yon."—To PLAUSTBLE VILLAIN "Go into the haouse, will you?"—He goes.

BLANCHE, "What do you want, PETER? Why do you tear my dress, and scratch your head so persistently?"

PETER. "Jewhillikins! That feller you love is a scoundrel. I'll prove it. Will you believe it after it's proved?"

BLANCHE, (With a fine sense of what is truly womanly.) "Of course I won't believe it. I despise proofs and arguments."

Enter TEDIOUS PEOPLE and IREELEVANT PEOPLE. They converse more tediously and irrelevantly than before. At last the carpenters, who have been out for beer, return and drop the curtain.

ACT III.

Enter PETER, in the clothes of an ordinary Christian. He practices a frightful dance, and remarks at intervals, "Jewhillikins."

Enter BLANCHE and PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN. The latter notices PETER, with convulsive alarm.

PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN. "Confusion! Can he suspect me? BLANCHE, we must fly at once. There is not a moment to lose."

Enter EVERYBODY. A quadrille is formed. PETER dances and falls over everybody else. The quadrille ends. PETER rises and remarks, "Jewhillikins." He goes out and returns, bringing the PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN'S wife with him. The PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN repents. BLANCHE consents to marry PETER. Various preposterous engagements are entered into by the TEDIOUS and the IRRELEVANT PEOPLE. And at last the play is over.

COMIC MAN among the audience. "Why should M'VICKER think a man a scoundrel, who deserts his wife and tries to marry another? Don't he come from Chicago?"

2D COMIC MAN.—"Don't SHERIDAN," (who plays the PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN,) "look as if he wished he were 'twenty miles away' when PETER denounces him?"

And the bystanders smile weakly, as though they had heard a good joke on SHERIDAN, and retire slowly toward their homes, evidently exhausted by the oppressive virtue of the intolerable Yankee boor, whom M'VICKER plays so well that the respectable portion of the audience is almost inclined to overlook the wretchedness of the part in admiration of the skill of the actor.

MATADOR.

Cue-rious Rumor.

That the Sound steamers are to be furnished with billiard tables for the amusement of passengers between New York and Boston. This report, however, is flatly contradicted, and we have neither charity nor chalk for the man who would make a statement so groundless. GEORGE FRANCIS, THE UBIQUITOUS.

Amidst all the chances and changes of this chequered, and, in some respects, lugubrious life, Mr. PUNCHINELLO has the perennial consolation of one friendship, which promises to be immortal, and over which time and space hold no sway. Need we say that we are alluding to the tender emotions which crowd our bosom whenever we hear of Mr. GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN! And lest our love for him should grow colder, this considerate gentleman allows us to hear from him almost daily. To be sure he is like some great antediluvian grasshopper, and seems capable of spanning this almost boundless continent at a leap. He is in Maine in the morning—he is making a speech in Minnesota when the evening shades prevail; but wherever he is, the roll of his eloquence reaches us, and however busy he may be, he is never too busy to write letters to tho newspapers. The great man comes very near to solving the problem heretofore considered insoluble, of being in two places at once. Two, did we say? Absurd! Three, four, five, half a dozen! What a man! Jumping here! Leaping there! Skipping North! Vaulting South! Skimming (like a CAMILLA in pantaloons) over the plains of the West! Then, as if by magic, whirling himself to the East! A man, did we say? Bah! GEORGE FRANCIS is clearly one of the immortals.

Clearly! JUPITER used to be rather lavish of electricity, but he did but a small retail business in it, compared with our dear GEORGE FRANCIS, the demi-god, who, when he is not talking with sublime garrulity, is telegraphing without regard to expense. Evidently it has dawned upon the mind (if he has any,) of this extraordinary being, that the world, in none of its quarters, can get along without him, and that the newspaper which does not mention his name must be stale, flat, and unprofitable. Wherefore he takes order that every newspaper shall print the wonderful name as often as possible. Whether he be laughed at, sneered at, sworn at, the virtue of the mere mention remains the same.

The last we heard from GEORGE FRANCIS, he was, (to use his own choice language,) "away up here on the Chippewa," beseeching the lumber men, with all the charm of his inimitable eloquence, to vote him into the Presidential chair. "I am waking up these boys for 1872," writes the valuable phenomenon. Unto "millers, rafters, choppers, and jammers," this Fountain of Oratory has gushed forth his "four hundred and twenty-first consecutive Presidential lecture." Imagine a possible scene upon a raft! GEORGE FRANCIS, mounted upon a whiskey-barrel, is making all the air resonant with rhetoric. The "rafters" are swearing! The "choppers" are cursing! The "jammers" are most reprehensibly blaspheming! The enormous mass floats onward, and "TRAIN!" the floods, "TRAIN!" the forests, "TRAIN!" the overarching skies resound! No miserable hall, no narrow street, no "pent-up Utica" contracts the power of this miraculous elocutionist—his auditorium seems to be a hemisphere—his audience all mankind! ORPHEUS singing moved rocks and trees. Great GEORGE spouting subdues all the inhabitants of the wilderness. Timid deer trip to the shore to listen; ferocious bears, catching the echo, shed tears of penitence; all creatures of the roaring kind acknowledge themselves surpassed and silenced; the whispering pines whisper all the more softly, as if ashamed of their own verbal weakness. All speeches, even the speeches of a TRAIN, must come to an end; and having ended, the floating DEMOSTHENES sits down to write to the newspapers, that he has just been delivered of his four-hundred-and- twenty-second, and is as well as could be expected.

Mr. PUNCHINELLO has, in his day, been considered talkative; but he feels, as he listens to GEORGE FRANCIS, that he is himself a marvel of taciturnity—that in the noble art of sounding his own trumpet he is a mere child—that as a contributor to the public amusement he is in danger of falling into paltry insignificance. Alas! he is not the marvellous mountebank which he has heretofore considered himself to be; and the nonsense upon which he so prided himself, in comparison with the nonsense of GEORGE FRANCIS, sinks into the most melancholy and insufferable wisdom. He looks forward to the future with a fear lest he may descend to the depths of serious and slow solemnity. When he has arrived at that deplorable stage of decay, he wishes it to be understood that his drum and trumpet are at the service of Mr. GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN.