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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342964" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Mummery</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE TWO CAVEES</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>DRAMATIS PERSONAE.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH _a Pelter of Railrogues_<br>PICKERING _his Partner, an Enemy to Sin_<br>OLD NICK _a General Blackwasher_<br>DEAD CAT _a Missile_<br>ANTIQUE EGG _Another_<br>RAILROGUES, DUMP-CARTERS. NAVVIES and Unassorted SHOVELRY in the Lower Distance</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Scene_-The Brink of a Railway Cut, a Mile Deep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Time_-1875.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>FITCH:<br>Gods! what a steep declivity! Below<br>I see the lazy dump-carts come and go,<br>Creeping like beetles and about as big.<br>The delving Paddies-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Case of _infra dig._</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Loring, light-minded and unmeaning quips<br>Come with but scant propriety from lips<br>Fringed with the blue-black evidence of age.<br>'Twere well to cultivate a style more sage,<br>For men will fancy, hearing how you pun,<br>Our foulest missiles are but thrown in fun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(_Enter Dead Cat._)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here's one that thoughtfully has come to hand;<br>Slant your fine eye below and see it land.<br>(_Seizes Dead Cat by the tail and swings it in act to throw._)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">DEAD CAT (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Merrily, merrily, round I go-<br>Over and under and at.<br>Swing wide and free, swing high and low<br>The anti-monopoly cat!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O, who wouldn't be in the place of me,<br>The anti-monopoly cat?<br>Designed to admonish,<br>Persuade and astonish<br>The capitalist and-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH _(letting go):_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Scat!<br>_(Exit Dead Cat.)_</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Huzza! good Deacon, well and truly flung!<br>Pat Stanford it has grassed, and Mike de Young.<br>Mike drives a dump-cart for the villains, though<br>'Twere fitter that he pull it. Well, we owe<br>The traitor one for leaving us!-some day<br>We'll get, if not his place, his cart away.<br>Meantime fling missiles-any kind will do.<br>_(Enter Antique Egg.)_<br>Ha! we can give them an _ovation_, too!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">ANTIQUE EGG:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the valley of the Nile,<br>Where the Holy Crocodile<br>Of immeasurable smile<br>Blossoms like the early rose,<br>And the Sacred Onion grows<br>When the Pyramids were new<br>And the Sphinx possessed a nose,<br>By a storkess I was laid<br>In the cool papyrus shade,<br>Where the rushes later grew,<br>That concealed the little Jew,<br>Baby Mose.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Straining very hard to hatch,<br>I disrupted there my yolk;<br>And I felt my yellow streaming<br>Through my white;<br>And the dream that I was dreaming<br>Of posterity was broke<br>In a night.<br>Then from the papyrus-patch<br>By the rising waters rolled,<br>Passing many a temple old,<br>I proceeded to the sea.<br>Memnon sang, one morn, to me,<br>And I heard Cambyses sass<br>The tomb of Ozymandias!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O, venerablest orb of all the earth,<br>God rest the lady fowl that gave thee birth!<br>Fit missile for the vilest hand to throw<br>I freely tender thee mine own. Although<br>As a bad egg I am myself no slouch,<br>Thy riper years thy ranker worth avouch.<br>Now, Pickering, please expose your eye and say<br>If-whoop!-<br>_(Exit egg.)_<br>I've got the range.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:<br>Hooray! hooray!<br>A grand good shot, and Teddy Colton's down:<br>It burst in thunderbolts upon his crown!<br>Larry O'Crocker drops his pick and flies,<br>And deafening odors scream along the skies!<br>Pelt 'em some more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There's nothing left but tar-<br>wish I were a Yahoo.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, you are.<br>But keep the tar. How well I recollect,<br>When Mike was in with us-proud, strong, erect<br>_Mens conscia recti_-flinging mud, he stood,<br>Austerely brave, incomparably good,<br>Ere yet for filthy lucre he began<br>To drive a cart as Stanford's hired man,<br>That pitch-pot bearing in his hand, Old Nick<br>Appeared and tarred us all with the same stick.<br>_(Enter Old Nick)_.<br>I hope he won't return and use his arts<br>To make us part with our immortal parts.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">OLD NICK:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Make yourself easy on that score my lamb;<br>For both your souls I wouldn't give a damn!<br>I want my tar-pot-hello! where's the stick?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Don't look at _me_ that fashion!-look at Pick.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forgive me, father-pity my remorse!<br>Truth is-Mike took that stick to spank his horse.<br>It fills my pericardium with grief<br>That I kept company with such a thief.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(_Endeavoring to get his handkerchief, he opens his coat and<br>the tar-stick falls out. Nick picks it up, looks at the culprit<br>reproachfully and withdraws in tears._)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH (_excitedly_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Pickering, come hither to the brink-<br>There's something going on down there, I think!<br>With many an upward smile and meaning wink<br>The navvies all are running from the cut<br>Like lunatics, to right and left-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:<br>Tut, tut-<br>'Tis only some poor sport or boisterous joke.<br>Let us sit down and have a quiet smoke.<br>(_They sit and light cigars._)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When first I met Miss Toughie<br>I smoked a fine cigyar,<br>An' I was on de dummy<br>And she was in de cyar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOTH (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An' I was on de dummy<br>And she was in de cyar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I couldn't go to her,<br>An' she wouldn't come to me;<br>An' I was as oneasy<br>As a gander on a tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOTH (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An' I was as oneasy<br>As a gander on a tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH (_singing_):</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But purty soon I weakened<br>An' lef' de dummy's bench,<br>An' frew away a ten-cent weed<br>To win a five-cent wench!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">BOTH (_singing_)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An' frew away a ten-cent weed<br>To win a five-cent wench!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is there not now a certain substance sold<br>Under the name of fulminate of gold,<br>A high explosive, popular for blasting,<br>Producing an effect immense and lasting?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, that's mere superstition. Rocks are rent<br>And excavations made by argument.<br>Explosives all have had their day and season;<br>The modern engineer relies on reason.<br>He'll talk a tunnel through a mountain's flank<br>And by fair speech cave down the tallest bank.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(_The earth trembles, a deep subterranean explosion is heard and a section of the bank as big as El Capitan starts away and plunges thunderously into the cut. A part of it strikes De Young's dumpcart abaft the axletree and flings him, hurtling, skyward, a thing of legs and arms, to descend on the distant mountains, where it is cold. Fitch and Pickering pull themselves out of the debris and stand ungraveling their eyes and noses._)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">FITCH:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, since I'm down here I will help to grade,<br>And do dirt-throwing henceforth with a spade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PICKERING:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">God bless my soul! it gave me quit a start.<br>Well, fate is fate-I guess I'll drive this cart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ambrose+Bierce">Ambrose Bierce</a><div class=q>
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

FITCH _a Pelter of Railrogues_
PICKERING _his Partner, an Enemy to Sin_
OLD NICK _a General Blackwasher_
DEAD CAT _a Missile_
ANTIQUE EGG _Another_
RAILROGUES, DUMP-CARTERS. NAVVIES and Unassorted SHOVELRY in t..."></div>
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