第30章

Otheller is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife.She has a lazy time of it, the hired girl doin all the cookin and washin.Desdemony, in fact, don't have to git the water to wash her own hands with.But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller family in the most outrajus stile.Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker.(Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem.Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago.Mike was a clever feller & orficer in Otheller's army.He liked his tods too well, howsever, & they floored him, as they have many other promisin young men.Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slyly throwin his whiskey over his shoulder.Mike gits as drunk as a biled owl & allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy before breakfast, without sweatin a hair.He meets Roderigo & proceeds for to smash him.A feller named Montano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that infatooated person runs his sword into him.That miserble man, Iago, pretents to be very sorry to see Mike conduck hisself in this way & undertakes to smooth the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a drawn sword & wants to know what's up.Iago cunningly tells his story, & Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a good deal of him, but he can't train no more in his regiment.Desdemony sympathizes with poor Mike & interceeds for him with Otheller.Iago makes him bleeve she does this because she thinks more of Mike than she does of hisself.Otheller swallers Iago's lyin tail & goes to makin a noosence of hisself ginrally.He worries poor Desdemony terrible by his vile insinuations, & finally smothers her to deth with a piller.Mrs.Iago cums in just as Otheller has finished the fowl deed & givs him fits right & left, showin him that he has bin orfully gulled by her miserble cuss of a husband.Iago cums in, & his wife commences rakin him down also, when he stabs her.Otheller jaws him a spell & then cuts a small hole in his stummick with his sword.Iago pints to Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a sardonic smile onto his countenance.Otheller tells the peple that he has dun the state sum service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a thing as they can for him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do.This is a breef skedule of the synopsis of the play.

Edwin Forrest is a grate acter.I thot I saw Otheller before me all the time he was actin, & when the curtin fell, I found my spectacles was still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes while poor Desdemony was dyin.Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that our domestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago!

Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage.He gits five-hundred dollars a nite & his board & washin.I wish I had such a Forrest in my Garding!

1.21.THE SHOW BUSINESS AND POPULAR LECTURES.

I feel that the Show Bizniss, which Ive stroven to ornyment, is bein usurpt by Poplar Lecturs, as thay air kalled, tho in my pinion thay air poplar humbugs.Individoouls, who git hard up, embark in the lecturin biznis.They cram theirselves with hi-sounding frazis, frizzle up their hare, git trustid for a soot of black close & cum out to lectur at 50 dollers a pop.Thay aint over stockt with branes, but thay hav brass enuff to make suffishunt kittles to bile all the sope that will be required by the ensooin sixteen ginerashuns.Peple flock to heer um in krowds.The men go becawz its poplar & the wimin folks go to see what other wimin folks have on.When its over the lecturer goze & ragales hisself with oysters and sich, while the peple say, "What a charmin lectur that air was," etsettery, etsettery, when 9 out of 10 of um don't have no moore idee of what the lecturer sed than my kangeroo has of the sevunth speer of hevun.Thare's moore infurmashun to be gut out of a well conductid noospaper--price 3 sents--than thare is out of ten poplar lectures at 25 or 50 dollers a pop, as the kase may be.

These same peple, bare in mind, stick up their nosis at moral wax figgers & sagashus beests.Thay say these things is low.

Gents, it greeves my hart in my old age, when I'm in "the Sheer & yeller leef" (to cote frum my Irish frend Mister McBeth) to see that the Show biznis is pritty much plade out; howsomever Ishall chance it agane in the Spring.

1.22.WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

I pitcht my tent in a small town in Injianny one day last seeson, & while I was standin at the dore takin money, a deppytashun of ladies came up & sed they wos members of the Bunkumville Female Moral Reformin & Wimin's Rite's Associashun, and thay axed me if they cood go in without payin.

"Not exactly," sez I, "but you can pay without goin in.""Dew you know who we air?" sed one of the wimin--a tall and feroshus lookin critter, with a blew kotton umbreller under her arm--"do you know who we air, Sir?""My impreshun is," sed I, "from a kersery view, that you air females.""We air, Sur," sed the feroshus woman--"we belong to a Society whitch beleeves wimin has rites--whitch beleeves in razin her to her proper speer--whitch beleeves she is indowed with as much intelleck as man is--whitch beleeves she is trampled on and aboozed--& who will resist henso4th & forever the incroachments of proud & domineering men."Durin her discourse, the exsentric female grabed me by the coat-kollor & was swinging her umbreller wildly over my hed.