DISINTERESTED CRITICISM.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 176, 26 July 1881, Page 4

DISINTERESTED CRITICISM.

Two farmers from Green County, Michigan, who were in Milwaukee with some hogs, and who were stopping at the Stock Yards Hotel, went t > see "Hamlet" at the Opera House. They sat on a front seat, and the audience noticed all through the play they were not pleased, and when they got into ahorse car after the performance, those in the ear got a pretty. good idea of what the trouble wcs. . . " Well, Lige how did it strike you?" said the sandyrwhiskered ope, as he bit off a piece of navy plug and handed the plug back to his friend. " Oh, it didn't strike me. All I want is:to live to get back to the tavern and find that red-headed hotel keeper that told me ' Hamlet' was a burlesque opera, with can-can girls. Call that a place of amusement? I suppose a place of amusement is where a man goes to laugh. I don't want nobody to charge me a dollar toy-see a funeral procession and listen t» a- fellow dig a grave' and sing comic songs. I tell you, Ezra, it don't look right to see skulls thrown around on the stage. And as for diggin' graves, there is a man in Monroe that can dig two graves to that fellow's one. I tell you it just made me sick to see that poor crazy girl, Ofeely, taking on about her father that Gimlet killed with a ecythe, and when them boys up in the loft begun to cheer her I felt like going and kicking them all down stairs, and then saying my prayers. Any man that will make fun of a crazy girl ain't fit to live. I tell you I felt so bad for that girl I was cussed glad when the hired girl come in and eaid she was drowneded." , "Hamlet was a bully boy, I thought, 'i said Ezra. "He could"' talk 'em- al Wiud, and knew more than the whole lot.^ Lige, do you think hewas crazy?" "Crazy, no, He was a darned fool, bay, Ezra, have a little sense now. Suppose your father was dead and your mother was married again to that fellow that looked like a saloon keeper, and some ghost should come howling around you, with pants made of tin foil, a mosquito bar blanket on, anil ft lin waglj

basin on his head, and point at you with a tin dinner-horn, and tell you the saloon keeper caught your father asleep out in the sugar bush and poured pepper-sauce in his ear and killed him, and told you to go around gnashing your teeth for revenge, and Aching your mother bald-headeu, nuuhin't you think it was a put-up job, and they were playing you for a sardine? Of course you would, and you would belt him one in the jaw, and tell the ghost to go and soak his head. Now wouldn't you ?" " Well, may be, Lige ; but Hamlet played his part well, didn't he !" " Certainly. The young man did splendidly, considering'the play he had, but I know school teachers in Green County that can write a better play than that during the recess. Hamle was no gentleman to treat that girl the way he did. He loved her, and stabbed her father, and sent her crazy, and when he happened to stumble on to her funeral in the graveyard he wanted to get up a crying match with the girl'B brother, and jumped into the grave on the coffin, and acted up and put on style, and tried to break up the funeral. Oh, get out. I don't like that way of doing business. A man that hain't got more sand than that couldn't get a job driv ing hogs for me. What he ought to have done was to marry that girl, and any court in Wisconsin would have made him marry her or pay a fine. For funeral obsequies, ' Hamlet ' is a good play, but give me Buffalo Bill. We get off here, Ez. Watch me kill that landlord when we get to the house. Egad, I can't help thinking how confounded mean that Hamlet treated his mother. When she had a right to sret married aurain."