ry
him. Just a bluff! And then he wanted his ribbon back, but she had already
made it into garters, and when he tried to take them by force she boxed him
smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two
cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with
sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no
war at the time and anyway his "mother wouldn't let him"--the topical
number. After smacking Robusto good and plenty before all the villagers,
Soprano, who seems to know how to take care of herself, swears that she'll
marry no one unless he has the wit "to get--that! And this!"--the garters.
Baritono, Soldier of Fortune, comes on the scene. Lots more bully dialogue
and song and then Baritono hears of Soprano's oath. It's easy for him and
he bides his time--you always have to bide your time--to indicate a point
behind Soprano, when she is in a wholly unsuspecting mood, and shout "Ha! A
mouse!! A mouse!!!" Village maidens scream and scatter. Soprano, skirts to
knees, hurdles into a chair, while Baritono deftly seizes the loose ends of
the now visible "lover-knots" and holds aloft the precious talismen.
Wedding. Finis!

But the Jinx got it.

[Illustration: A PIRATICAL BALLAD
SONG FOR BASS OR DEEP BARITONE
WORDS BY YOUNG E. ALLISON.
MUSIC BY HENRY WALLER.]

BALLAD _of_ DEAD MEN

If Young Allison is vain of anything he has done I have yet to hear such an
expression from him. He just writes things and tucks them away in odd
corners and it has devolved upon me to collect them and keep them. So it is
that, while not a literary executor--because Allison, thank God, is
scandalously healthy and I am making no professions--it falls to my
satisfied lot to be a literary collector in a certain sense--if he who
gathers and preserves and gloats over the brain products of others may thus
be described. That is why, treasured among my earthly possessions--scant
enough, the good Lord knows, but full of joy and satisfaction to me--are
extensive lead-pencil manuscript memoranda in Allison's writing showing the
painstaking stages by which "Fifteen Dead Men," characterized by James
Whitcomb Riley as that "masterly and exquisite ballad of delicious
horrificness," reached its perfection. Under whatever name it may be sung,
be it "The Ballad of Dead Men," or "On Board the Derelict" or "Derelict,"
it is