praise. Let me rather speak of the social and literary triumphs of our
little community, of our floating Arcadia--may I say Olympus? Where
shall we find another Minerva like Mrs. Markham, another Thalia like
Miss Chubb, another Juno like Mrs. Brimmer, worthy of the Jove-like
Quincy Brimmer; another Queen of Love and Beauty like--like"--continued
the gallant Senor, with an effective oratorical pause, and a profound
obeisance to Miss Keene, "like one whose mantling maiden blushes forbid
me to name?" (Prolonged applause.) "Where shall we find more worthy
mortals to worship them than our young friends, the handsome Brace,
the energetic Winslow, the humorous Crosby? When we look back upon our
concerts and plays, our minstrel entertainments, with the incomparable
performances of our friend Crosby as Brother Bones; our recitations,
to which the genius of Mrs. M'Corkle, of Peoria, Illinois, has lent her
charm and her manuscript" (a burlesque start of terror from Crosby),
"I am forcibly impelled to quote the impassioned words from that gifted
woman,--
'When idly Life's barque on the billows of Time,
Drifts hither and yon by eternity's sea;
On the swift feet of verse and the pinions of rhyme
My thoughts, Ulricardo, fly ever to thee!'"
"Who's Ulricardo?" interrupted Crosby, with assumed eagerness, followed
by a "hush!" from the ladies.
"Perhaps I should have anticipated our friend's humorous question," said
Senor Perkins, with unassailable good-humor. "Ulricardo, though not
my own name, is a poetical substitute for it, and a mere figure of
apostrophe. The poem is personal to myself," he continued, with a slight
increase of color in his smooth cheek which did not escape the attention
of the ladies,--"purely as an exigency of verse, and that the inspired
authoress might more easily express herself to a friend. My acquaintance
with Mrs. M'Corkle has been only epistolary. Pardon this digression, my
friends, but an allusion to the muse of poetry did not seem to me to be
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