' His sister--these things run in
families--had sung 'My Little Gray Home in the West'--rather sombrely,
for she had wanted to sing the 'Rosary,' and, with the same obtuseness
which characterised her brother, had come back and rendered two
plantation songs. The audience was now examining its programmes in the
interval of silence in order to ascertain the duration of the sentence
still remaining unexpired.
It was shocked to read the following:
7. A Little Imitation......S. Marlowe
All over the saloon you could see fair women and brave men wilting in
their seats. Imitation...! The word, as Keats would have said, was
like a knell! Many of these people were old travellers, and their minds
went back wincingly, as one recalls forgotten wounds, to occasions when
performers at ships' concerts had imitated whole strings of Dickens'
characters or, with the assistance of a few hats and a little false
hair, had endeavored to portray Napoleon, Bismarck, Shakespeare and
others of the famous dead.
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