DEAR CONTINENTAL:  Possibly you would not give ‘a Continental dime’ for that which I am about to pen.  Possibly, too, you may damn it into the waste-basket.  I have often heard of a ’Continental damn’—­it never occurred to me before what the article really was.  Dante has, I know, provided a corner for those who were in-continentally condemned; but it was reserved for you to abridge the word, and so make a vice of a virtue!

    I once lived in a village:  to that village came an itinerant
    dramatic company; and that company advertised to play a grand
    moral temperance drama, entitled Down the Hill.

    The principal actor called himself Eglantine Mowbray.  I believe
    that the latter syllable of the last name was the only portion
    thereof to which he was really entitled.  He did bray.

    The bills appeared, with the following heading: 

  UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION.

  On Monday Evening,

  THE YOUTHFUL ROSCUSS!

  EGLANTINE MOWBRAY!!

  Will appear in his great role,

  DOWN THE HILL.

Our simple villagers had seen circuses; but youthful Roscusses were entirely beyond their experience.  Quite as unfamiliar was the word role, which, to their badly-lettered fancy, stood for movement, by ’turning on the surface, or with a circular motion, in which all parts of the surface are successively applied to a plane, ‘as to roll a barrel or puncheon.’ [You use Webster?]

So, when the ‘show’ opened, there was a large attendance, and in that vast multitude of two hundred and thirty men, women, and children, there was not one who did not anticipate an acrobatic performance.

The play pleased them, however.  Temperance was rife among us in those days; it was ‘in our midst,’ as people ought not to say, and the drunken disgraces of John the Inebriate were appreciated.  Still, there was an evident feeling of unsatisfied anticipation, which grew with every act, and in all the house there was not a soul who did not murmur to his or her neighbor, ’I wonder when he’s goin’ to roll down-hill.’

The play terminated.  The Inebriate died, under a strong pressure of delirium tremens, groaning and braying loud enough to scare away the fiends which gathered around.  But, to the amazement of all parties upon the stage and behind the scenes, the fall of the curtain was accompanied by a thunder-roar of disgust, and the rain-like sound of numerous hisses.

    The audience voted the play a humbug.  The village was disgusted. 
    Eglantine Mowbray stock went down to nothing.