but upon the city that encourages and sustains such
wholesome and instructive entertainments.
We would simply suggest that the practice of
vulgar young boys in the gallery of shying peanuts
and paper pellets at the tigers, and saying “Hi-yi!”
and manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction
by such observations as “Bully for the
lion!” “Go it, Gladdy!” “Boots!”
“Speech!” “Take a walk round
the block!” and so on, are extremely reprehensible,
when the Emperor is present, and ought to be stopped
by the police. Several times last night,
when the supernumeraries entered the arena to
drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery
shouted, “Supe! supe!” and also,
“Oh, what a coat!” and “Why don’t
you pad them shanks?” and made use of
various other remarks expressive of derision.
These things are very annoying to the audience.
“A matinee for the little folks
is promised for this afternoon, on which occasion
several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers.
The regular performance will continue every night
till further notice. Material change of
programme every evening. Benefit of Valerian,
Tuesday, 29th, if he lives.”
I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time,
and I was often surprised to notice how much more
I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did; and it gratifies
me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of
ancient times knew how a broad sword battle ought to
be fought than the gladiators.
So far, good. If any man has a right to feel
proud of himself, and satisfied, surely it is I.
For I have written about the Coliseum, and the gladiators,
the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once
used the phrase “butchered to make a Roman holiday.”
I am the only free white man of mature age, who has
accomplished this since Byron originated the expression.
Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for
the first seventeen or eighteen hundred thousand times
one sees it in print, but after that it begins to
grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning
Rome—and here latterly it reminds me of
Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer, fresh
from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of
Nevada to begin life. He found that country,
and our ways of life, there, in those early days,
different from life in New England or Paris.
But he put on a woollen shirt and strapped a navy
revolver to his person, took to the bacon and beans
of the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada
did. Oliver accepted the situation so completely
that although he must have sorrowed over many of his
trials, he never complained—that is, he
never complained but once. He, two others, and
myself, started to the new silver mines in the Humboldt
mountains—he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt
county, and we to mine. The distance was two
hundred miles. It was dead of winter.
We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred
