misguided public--the
illustrious individuals aforesaid would not come, and consequently the
public were compelled to witness the consummation of the dreadful
tragedy, by authors whose works they had never heard of; painters whose
productions were unknown to the world, and editors whom a close
investigation resolved into obscure scribblers.

To this literary exhibition Overdale, Wagstaff, and John Spout resolved
to go--Overdale to give the necessary explanations, Wagstaff to make a
transcript of his friend's valuable remarks, and John Spout (himself an
amateur artist) to see the celebrated men of his own profession, whose
contributions to art had been so persistently kept out of sight.

The performance was to take place in the Academy of Music, a building
designed and completed by a diabolically ingenious architect, who
endeavored to construct a theatre in such a manner that one half the
audience could not hear, and the other half could not see, and who
succeeded to admiration.

Our friends obtained seats in that part of the house where they could
see, though it was not possible to _hear_ a word.

After a great many preliminary flourishes and false starts by the
members of the orchestra, they set off as nearly together as they could,
in obedience to the frantic gestures of the leader, who flourished his
fiddle-bow with as much energy and vindictiveness as if he had been
insanely endeavoring to kill mosquitoes with it, in forty different
directions at once.

Finally the curtain went up amid the uproarious applause of the
assembled multitude, interrupted only by a small boy in the gallery, who
hissed like a whole flock of enraged wild-geese, having been stationed
there especially for the performance of this sibilant duty by an
avenging washerwoman, to whom one of the amateurs owed four and
sixpence; his dissenting voice was, however, soon hushed by the police,
who put him out, and didn't give him his money back, after which the
exhibition proceeded.

To give a full description of one half of the ridiculous performances
indulged in by these deluded persons--to tell of the new readings which
they gave, and the old readings which they didn't give--to relate how
carefully they avoided the traps, and with what commendable caution they
kept away from the footlights--to give an idea of the bedlamitish
ingenuity they had displayed in the selection of wardrobe, how each one
had put on the most inappropriate articles imagina