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Updated: May 22, 2025
He bounced on the stage in a Prince-Albert coat and a Derby hat, rollicking, truculent, plainly exhilarated. Why, it was M. Lontane in disguise, the second in command of the police, the hero of the battle of the limes, the coal, and the potatoes. He gave a side-splitting burlesque of the conflict.
Not far before them had ridden the Earl and the Lady Sybilla. Behind these two came the Marshal de Retz and the fat Lord of Avondale. They were telling each other tales of the wars of La Pucelle, the latter laughing and shaking shoulders, but at the end of every side-splitting legend the Frenchman would glance over his shoulder at Maud Lindesay and the little maiden Margaret.
Born in savagery, having lived in savagery all their lives and known naught else, their sense of humour was correspondingly savage. To them, the sight of a stunned and possibly dead puppy was a side-splitting, ludicrous event.
According to his own account he had been in the early days of his Texas career a drunkard. "Everybody got drunk," I once heard him say, referring to the beginning of the Texas revolution, as he gave a side-splitting picture of that bloody episode, "and I realized that somebody must get sober and keep sober."
During the intermissions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses the audience with side-splitting imitations of the pompous and frigid Governor, who, as someone unkindly remarked, "must have been born in an ice-chest," and of the bemoustached and bemonocled officer who commands the constabulary, locally referred to as the Galloping Major.
But that it was eminently satisfactory to all concerned was clearly evinced by the appearance of the whole party the elegant ease with which Fergus McKay did it; the tremendous energy with which Jacques Bourassin tried it; the persistent vigour with which Andre Morel studied it; the facility with which Elise acquired it under Elspie's tuition; the untiring perseverance with which Archie and Little Bill did something like it for the latter had quite recovered, and was fit to hold his own, almost, with any one; the charming confusion of mind with which Fred Jenkins intermingled the sailor's hornpipe with it; the inimitable languor with which La Certe condescended to go through it; the new-born energy with which Slowfoot footed it; the side-splitting shrieks with which Old Peg regarded it; the uproarious guffaws with which the delighted old Duncan hailed it; the sad smile with which that weak and worn invalid Duncan junior beheld it; and, last, but not least, the earnest mental power and conspicuous physical ability with which Dan Davidson attempted something which Charity personified might have supposed to bear a distant resemblance to it.
At the end of her performance Emily stated that this circus, being modern and up-to-date in all respects, had substituted for the conventional after-concert, "a side-splitting farce which would appeal to all intelligent and literary persons and make them laugh and cry with mirth."
If he took half a poor rustic's crop for his fee, he was ready enough to toss him sixpence for drink money; and if he made the tenants of the lands allotted to his office leave their tobacco uncared for whilst they rowed him on his innumerable roving expeditions up creeks and rivers, he at least lightened their labors with most side-splitting tales, and with bottle songs learned in a thousand taverns.
But it was on board ship, and both were devilish seasick. Walker you remember my friend Walker? tells the story in a side-splitting way. I wonder what has become of Walker? The last time I met him he was travelling agent for a menagerie a most interesting fellow, Walker. But I beg your pardon. Go on, old fellow! 'Well, after that we at once saw a good deal of each other.
"So do I," said Guy, "I just love to play a side-splitting part like Hamlet." "Then you may have a chance," said Marian, "for one of the plays we're thinking about and it isn't exactly a play either brings in a whole lot of tragic characters in a humourous way. It's a general mix-up, you know: Hamlet, and Sairy Gamp, and Rip Van Winkle, and Old Mother Hubbard, and everybody."
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