all 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
inconsistent with our gathering here. Let me briefly conclude by saying
that the occasion is a happy and memorable one; I think I echo the
sentiment of all present when I add that it is one which will not be
easily forgotten by either the grateful guests, whose feelings I have
tried to express, or the chivalrous hosts, whose kindness I have already
so feebly translated."

In the applause that followed, and the clicking of glasses, Senor
Perkins slipped away. He mingled a moment with some of the other guests
who had already withdrawn to the corridor, lit a cigar, and then passed
through a narrow doorway on to the ramparts. Here he strolled to some
distance, as if in deep thought, until he reached a spot where the
crumbling wall and its fallen debris afforded an easy descent into the
ditch. Following the ditch, he turned an angle, and came upon the beach,
and the low sound of oars in the invisible offing. A whistle brought the
boat to his feet, and without a word