are ransacked for costumes and properties; hats, canes,
umbrellas, and firearms are mustered, and old dresses that haven't
seen the light for forty years are rummaged out as disguises for the
actors in these extempore theatricals.

In a certain circle in this city there was a knot of clever young
people, of both sexes, strongly addicted to acting charades, and very
happy in their execution. But they were unfortunately afflicted by an
interloper,

"Whose head
Was not of brains particularly full,"

one of those geniuses who have a fatal facility for making blunders.
Yet, with a pleasing unconsciousness of his deficiencies, he was
always volunteering his services, and always expected, in this matter
of acting charades, to be intrusted with the leading parts.

One evening the usual coterie was assembled, charades were proposed,
as usual, and the little knot of performers retired to the back
drawing room, dropping the curtain behind them, and prepared for their
performance, congratulating themselves that Mr. Blinks, the name of
the marplot, was not on hand to spoil their sport. They selected the
word _catastrophe_, and the curtain went up.

A very pretty and lively young lady, who had been abroad, gave a very
happy imitation of the almost inimitable Jenny Vertpre, in the French
vaudeville of the "Cat metamorphosed to a Woman," in that scene where
she betrays her original nature. She purred, she frolicked, she
pounced on an imaginary mouse, caught it, tossed it up in the air, and
went through all the manoeuvres of a veritable grimalkin. When the
curtain fell, amidst roars of laughter and applause, the first
syllable--cat--was whispered from mouth to mouth, among the audience.

At this moment the hated Blinks arrived in the green-room.

"What are you up to? Acting charades--eh? By Jove! I'm just in time.
You must give me a part--can't get along without me. What's the word?"

"No matter," said the young lady who had played the cat, with a wicked
smile of intelligence. "Prompter, ring the curtain up. All you've got
to do, Mr. Blinks, is to walk across the stage."

"But where's my dress?"

"What you have on. Appear in your own character."

The curtain went up, and Blinks stalked across with his accustomed air
of intolerable stupidity. Amidst smothered laughter, the audience
guessed the second syllable of the charade--_ass_.

The curtain went up for the third time. A group of Indian chiefs were