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were not the last of the sentence, he would assuredly fail of getting any applause on this usually good "point." Instances innumerable of this nature might be adduced to show the difference between writing for the eye and writing for the ear. The trained dramatist or the actor who writes a play may not always have great command of language, or be absolutely perfect as a grammarian, but his speeches will "tell" in the delivery. A young dramatist should never neglect to read and re-read his speeches aloud. By so doing he will learn to correct his diction by his ear, until with practice he will be able to hear his words spoken as he writes them down for the first time.

Individuality in speech must be one of the great aims of the dramatist. The novelist can explain how his characters looked and felt, but stage-talk must be thoroughly distinctive and individual. In a really well written play each speech should bear such marked character that it would seem in its proper place only in the mouth of the one person who makes it. To gain this quality much thought and study are necessary, and the want of it is one of the rocks on which the good writer who does not know the stage is usually wrecked.

Collaboration with an actor or an experienced dramatist is the best way for the novice in stage-craft to learn his business. In this country there has been very little collaboration; but in France it is customary for the older writers to associate themselves with the younger, the latter furnishing ideas and the former putting them into shape. In this way the results of experience are communicated and a succession of welltrained dramatists is maintained.

While the observance of the rules and the avoidance of the dangers I have set forth will not suffice to make any one a successful playwright, they will, I hope, help those who already possess the first requisite, viz., a strong story, developed by interesting characters placed in exciting or amusing situations. To the many who wonder why there are not more good plays, the difficulties and necessities I have endeavored to explain may, perhaps, prove a sufficient answer.

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The rose's shattered splendor flees
With lavish grace on every breeze,
And lilies sway with flexile ease

Like dryads snowy-breasted;
And where gardenias drowse between
Rich curving leaves of glossy green,
The cricket strikes his tambourine,
Amid the mosses nested.

Here dawn-flushed myrtles interlace,
And sifted sunbeams shyly trace
Frail arabesques whose shifting grace

Is wrought of shade and shimmer;
At eventide scents quaint and rare
Go straying through my garden fair,
As if they sought with wildered air
The fireflies' fitful glimmer.

Oh, could some painter's facile brush
On canvas limn my garden's blush,
The fevered world its din would hush.
To crown the high endeavor;

Or could a poet snare in rhyme
The breathings of this balmy clime,

His fame might dare the dart of Time
And soar undimmed forever!

Samuel Minturn Peck.

OUR ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS.

XIII.

89. Why do brides wear orange-blossoms?

The Saracen brides used to wear orange-blossoms as an emblem of fecundity. In that sense it is peculiarly appropriate, as both blossoms and fruit are often on the tree at the same time. The same emblem may have been occasionally worn by European brides ever since the time of the Crusades; but the general adoption of orange-blossoms for brides is comparatively a modern practice, probably at first adopted because the orange-flower was rare and costly and it has always been the custom to be expensive at weddings. The orange-blossoms were found appropriate and suitable, the sentiment under which it was used by the Saracens was approved, and it became the fashion for brides to wear the orange-blossoms.

The orange fruit was brought to England as early as 1290, but it was a long time before there was really any cultivation of the orange. The tree is supposed by many to have been brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh, and the statement is made that it was not adopted from the Saracens, but probably from India, or at least from the far East. It owed its adoption at first to the fact that it was both a rare and a scented flower, and was introduced without any reference to its symbolism.

It was a universal mediæval custom to wear flowers for a bridal wreath. Orange-flowers seem to have been first used in Spain for that purpose, and to have come to England by the way of France. Some of the correspondents of Notes and Queries consider the introduction to have been a device of French milliners. They are superior to roses in being thornless, and both color and scent were in their favor.-BIBOTA.

90. What is the story of the Kilkenny cats?

The Irish story of the two cats of Kilkenny who fought and fought till there was naught left but their tails has its origin in fact.

In 1798, during the Irish rebellion, Kilkenny was garrisoned by Hessians. The soldiers used to amuse themselves by tying two cats together by the tails and hanging them over a clothes-line, where they would fight desperately till one or the other, or both, perhaps, were killed. When this cruelty became known to the officers, they determined to stop it, and so sent an officer every day to watch for any offence of this kind and to punish the offender. The soldiers would keep a man on watch themselves, and when the word was given of the approach of the officer the cats would be let loose. One day the man neglected to keep a lookout, and, the officer coming upon them suddenly, one of the soldiers divided the cats' tails with his sword, and the cats ran off, “leaving their tails behind them," like Bo-Peep's sheep. The officer inquired about the curious sight of two cats' tails hanging on the line, and was told that two cats had fought desperately, destroyed each other all but the tails, and the soldiers had picked up these appendages and hung them on the line.

So started the story, according to Irish authorities.

Brewer says, "This is an allegory of the municipalities of Kilkenny and Irishtown, who contended so stoutly about boundaries and rights to the end of the seventeenth century that they mutually impoverished each other,―ate up each other, leaving only a tail behind."

"De Gubernatis," says Conway, "in his 'Zoological Mythology,' has a curious speculation concerning the origin of our familiar fable 'The Kilkenny Cats,' which he traces to the German superstition which dreads the combat between cats as presaging death to the one who witnesses it."

91. Whence the expression "crocodile tears"?

OLIVE OLDSCHOOL.

The expression "crocodile tears" is derived from the fiction of the old travellers that the crocodile sheds tears over its prey. One of the earliest allusions to this fable is by Sir John Mandeville in his "Travels" (1499), who, speaking of "Ethiop,' " "Ynde," and an Yle clept Silla," says, "That Lond is full of Serpents, and of Cokadrilles. Theise Cokadrilles ben a manner of long Serpente, zalowe and rayed aboven, and han 4 Feete and schorte Thyes, and grete Nayles as Clees or Talonns; and there ben sume that han 5 Fadme in length; and sume of six and a halfendal. And in the nyght thei dwellen in the Water, and on the Day won upon the Lond. Theise Serpentes sleu men, and thei eten hem wepynge; and when thei eten thei moven the over Jowe, and noughte the nether Jowe; and thei have no Tonge."

Polydore Vergil's "Adagiorum Liber" was written about the same time (1498). After noticing Pliny's account of the crocodile, he says, "Conspecto homine lachrymat, mox appropinquantem devorat. Unde est proverbium, 'Lachrymæ crocodili,' de iis qui specie misericordiæ et pietatis homines fallunt."

Erasmus (1467-1536) quotes both the Latin and Greek ("Krokodeilon dákrua") proverbs, and in his Colloquy on "Friendship" one of the interlocutors says, "Jam nullum est animal inimicius homini quam crocodilus, qui sæpenumero totos homines devorat, et arte malitiam adjuvat, hausta aqua lubricans semitas, quibus descendunt ad Nilum aquam hausturi quo collapsos devoret." This account is from Elian (early part of third century), "De Animalium Natura:" so even then the crocodile was believed to be extremely crafty. Erasmus, in "Adagia,” adds to this relation of the animal making the banks of

the Nile slippery, that the unfortunate travellers may slide down into his jaws, another instance of guile, that when the crocodile has caught his prey he macerates the skull with tears to soften it, and devours that part last.

"His nature is ever, when he would have his prey, to cry and sob like a Christian body, to provoke them to come to him; and then he snatcheth at them! And thereupon came this proverb, that is applied unto women when they weep, 'Lachrymæ Crocodili,' the meaning whereof is that as the crocodile when he crieth goeth then about most to deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth."-Account of Hawkins's Second Voyage to the West Indies,

1565.

In Fischart's "Flöhatz, Weibertratz," 1573, is the following passage:

O du bös unbarmherzig Art,

Die von kaim Menschen geboren ward,
Sondern vom Crocodil komt her,

Der zum Mord waint, wan mordet er.

Leroux de Lincy, in his "Proverbes Français," defines the phrase "Verser les larmes de crocodile Verser les larmes trompeuses. On prétend que le crocodile feint de pleurer pour attirer vers lui les passants."

In the Nineteenth Century for April, 1882, in an article on the superstitions of modern Greece, a curious notion with regard to the seal is mentioned, which resembles this about the crocodile. A woman is fabled to dwell in the seal: when a swimmer ventures too far, the seal seizes him by the neck, strangles him, and carries him to a desert shore, where she weeps over him, giving rise to the expression "She cries like a seal."

As when a wearie traveller that strayes

By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile,
Unweeting of the perilous wandring wayes,
Doth meete a cruell craftie Crocodile,
Which, in false griefe hyding his harmfull guile,
Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender tears;
The foolish man, that pities all this while

His mournfull plight, is swallowed up unwares,
Forgetfull of his owne that mindes an other's cares;
So wept Duessa untill eventyde,

That shyning lampes in Jove's high house were light.

SPENSER, Faerie Queene, I. 5, 18, 19, 1590.

He (noble Lord), fearelesse of hidden treason,
Sweetly salutes this weeping Crocodile;
Excusing every cause with instant reason

That kept him from her sight so long a while:

She faintly pardons him; smiling by Art:
For life was in her lookes, death in her hart.

R. BARNFIELD, Cassandra, 1595.

"It is written that the crocodile will weep over a man's head when he hath devoured the body, and then he will eat up the head too. Wherefore in Latin there is a proverbe, 'Crocodili lachrymæ,' to signify such tears as are fained and spent only with intent to deceive or doe harm."-BULLOKAR, English Expositor, 1616.

If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.

Out of my sight!

Othello, Act iv., Scene 1, 11. 256-8.

Gloster's show

Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers.

King Henry VI., Part 2, Act iii., Sc. 1.
ONE OF A THOUSAND.

92. What was the old fable of the origin of the barnacle goose? One of the most curious instances of the power of popular etymology is seen in the English Barnacle. The word, used in the sense of limpet, is probably pernicula (diminutive of the Latin perna), changed to bernicula, a real bird,

known as the barnacle goose. But, though the bird is real, the accounts of it which have arisen through a series of blunders are most marvellous. These words bernacula (a small limpet) and bernicula (a goose) being gradually confused, and the two corrupted into barnacle, it was natural to look for the identity of nature in the two creatures; and, as the cirri of the limpet were observed to resemble the feathers of a goose, it was given out that the goose was the offspring of the limpet. There are two families of these limpets: the first class are attached to their resting-place by a flexible stalk; the second class are the seaacorns, composed of six segments, and firmly fixed on the wood or stone on which they live. In the early stages, the form of the limpet is not unlike that of a crab, possessing eyes and some freedom of motion: it is later that it loses its eyes, forms shells, and becomes stationary. The ancient error was to mistake the claw of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the antennæ for a tuft of feathers. The barnacle goose was otherwise known as the "Solan" or "Solent" goose (so called from Solent, an ancient name for the whole of the English Channel, which these birds frequent in large numbers), and called by the Scotch "bren-clake," or "brant-claik" (which Müller derives from the old Briton clake, "a wild goose," and brant or branded, "brown"). Old writers of the very highest credit have fallen into the ridiculous error which confounds the bird with the shell-fish. So late as 1677, Sir Robert Moray, in "A Relation concerning Barnacles," gravely affirms, before a scientific public, that he saw, on some timber thrown up on the shore by the sea, "a multitude of little shells, having within them little birds, perfectly shaped, supposed to be barnacles;" and then he proceeds to describe the appearance of the "bill, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feathers of the bird." Holinshed declared that with his own eyes he had seen the "feathers of these barnacles hang out of the shell at least two inches." The fact that these barnacles were so often found growing to old wood and trees near the water gave rise to a theory that there was a "tree-goose," and John Gerarde, of London, published in 1597, at the end of his "Herball," not only a lively picture of the tree, with birds issuing from its branches and swimming away on the sea or falling dead on the land, but we read the following description: "There are founde in the north parts of Scotland certain trees, whereon doe growe certain shell-fishes, which shels in time of maturitie doe open, and out of them growe_those little living foules, whom we call Barnakles; in the north of England, Brant Gese; and in Lancashire, Tree Gese." Another theory as to the origin of the tree-goose is ventured by Hector Boece, in his "History of Scotland" (1465-1536), who says, in most curious English, that these geese are bred by nature of the seas; that timber which has been soaked by water in process of time appears worm-eaten, and that in these little holes appear small worms, which first develop heads and feet, and then wings and plumage, and the goose is complete. Hall says,—

The Scottish barnacle if I might choose,
That of a worm doth waxe a goose.

In the time of Henry II. (1154-89) we find the same story so firmly established that Giraldus Cambrensis found it necessary to protest against the Irish bishops for the custom then prevailing, of eating those barnacle geese during Lent, because they were not birds, but fishes. In his "Topographia Hiberna" he says, "I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in shells, and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds; nor do they ever hatch any eggs; nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth. Hence bishops and clergymen in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh, nor born of flesh. But these are thus drawn into sin; for if a man, during Lent, had dined off leg of Adam, our first parent, who was not born of flesh, surely we should not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." It is impossible to tell how long before this the fable of the origin of the barnacle goose existed, but the belief in it survived the attacks of occasional contradiction. Pope Pius II., when on a visit to King James, complained that miracles will always flee farther and farther, for when he came to Scotland to see

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