Between the acts he lounged in the lobbies and heard the
critics speak with sneering derision of the complimentary notices of the
American Nightingale which they were about to write, while they
expressed, with sardonic smiles, a longing for the day when they would
be "allowed"--such was their singular expression--to "speak the truth
about Miss KELLOGG as a prima donna." And while he sat with closed eyes
during the third act, wondering whether he should believe the critics in
the flesh, or their criticisms in the columns of their respective
journals, he saw rehearsed before him a new operatic perversion of
MACBETH, as unlike the original as even VERDI'S MACBETTO, and quite as
inexplicable to the unsophisticated mind. And this is what he saw:
_Scene, the Dark Cave in fourteenth street. In the middle a Cauldron
boiling. Thunder--and probably small beer--behind the scenes. Enter
three Witches._
_1st Witch_. Thrice the Thomas cat hath yowled.
_2d Witch_. Thrice; and once the hedge-hog howled.
_3d Witch_. All of which is wholly irrelevant to our present purpose,
which is to summon what my friend Sir BULWER LYTTON would call the
Scin-Laeca, or, apparition of each living critic from the nasty deep of
the cauldron, and to interview him in order to hear what he really
thinks of Miss KELLOGG.
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