was induced to shout at a critical moment the tricky words, "Pluck them asunder," when, with great gusto and apparent satisfaction at his mastery of a troublesome language, he gave forth the strange ejaculation, "Massonder em Plucket.' Similar feats have, of course, been accomplished by other foreigners, while linguistic contortions equally unusual are credited to native born Britons and Americans. For example, Jemmy Bland, the Durham actor who has already figured in this paper, was once entrusted with the difficult passage in Hamlet beginning,

"Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warranty."

He condensed Shakspere's wordiness into the line, "Her obsequies are large as we can make 'em." A more striking condensation was made by an Australian Iago who, instead of culminating his fine description to Desdemona of the "deserving weight" with the line, "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer," indulged in the briefer anti-climax, "To suckle small beer." Not so bad was the American actor who, writes Olive Logan, was to say, in the rôle of First Murderer, "My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him," but preferred the more colloquial language, "I cut his throat, my lord, and died for him." But Americans have done better than that. A Chicago stage-manager is accused of the indiscretion of assigning to an inexperienced stage shepherdess the following words intended for a dairymaid: "Hope filled their youth and whetted their love; they plighted their troth." To the eternal disgrace, I hope, of the author of such twaddle, the shepherdess broke forth on the night of the initial performance: "Hope filled their trough and blighted their love; they whetted their tooth." Even more ridiculous than this American mutilation of text is the "beautiful indefiniteness" credited to George Alexander Steevens in Haslewood's Green Room Gossip, a performance which may possibly have suggested a famous

While

quotation from the Koran to be found in Dickens, to say nothing of various jokes that are still being told. playing with an itinerant company in Norfolk, Steevens had, in consequence of repeated poor houses, neglected to study the part of Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice. He nevertheless got along fairly well until he struck the difficult passage composed by somebody as an improvement on Shakspere:

"In such a night

As this Leander swam the Hellespont

And braved the winds and waves for Hero's sake."

Steevens proceeded to indulge in a further improvement:

"Oh, Jessica, on such a night as this, the man Swam over the water, and he duck'd and he dived And he got to the other side, and there he met with his sweetheart."

Blunders similar to those recorded above are of course still occasionally being made on the stage; for, in spite of the mistakes of their predecessors and the warnings contained in books on dramatic technique, playwrights continue to indulge in "the rattle of incongruous consonants" and in "jawbreaking hiatus." In her book on playwriting, for instance, Miss Fanny Cannon cites the recent failure of an excellent play in New York because the translator had adopted it in "University English," through which the poor actors vainly sought to struggle. In his Dramatic Technique Professor Baker, in addition to quoting the following sentence from a late drama, "She's sure she'll have a shock if she sees him," gives an amusing account of an indignant authoress who insisted that her original line had been misunderstood by actor and critic alike and that what she actually wrote was this: "How is one to know which is one's real self when one feels so different with different people," which equals any of the "one-one-one constructions" in Oscar Wilde or in the approved handbooks on composi

tion. Of course, too, actors are going to trip their tongues occasionally no matter how simple and natural their lines may be, but it is certain that in these days of realistic stage dialogue and intensive rehearsals such blunders will not be SO common as they were in the days of ornate stage language and inadequate rehearsals in consequence of short runs and the old star system. Whenever they do occur, they will be laughed at just as heartily as they were in the times of Davies and Wilkinson and the rest, and they will be copied just as sedulously in the jest-books of the future. If by any chance such mistakes are not made hereafter, they will, of course, continue to be manufactured by the afterdinner speaker and the compiler of theatrical anecdotes.

THE BARD OF COOSAWHATCHIE

BY THE EDITOR

In Volume XV of the Library of Southern Literature 1910), a volume made up of biographical sketches of more or less notable Southern authors, on page 111, is found this brief paragraph:

DAVIS, JOHN, poet, was one of the earliest of the colonial minstrels. Though a foreigner by birth, he became an adopted son of South Carolina, and, on the authority of Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn, his "Sonnet to the Whippoorwill" was probably the first production of its kind in the Palmetto State. He published in pamphlet form, a number of poems, and a copy of the little duodecimo is preserved in the library of the College of Charleston. In view of the remote period at which he wrote, the merit of his work is most pronounced. He always styled himself "John Davis of Coosawhatchie."

The same writer is the subject of a very similar, but slightly more accurate, sketch in Professor Wauchope's Writers of South Carolina (1910, p. 131), to which these two sentences are appended:

My attention has been called by my colleague, Professor Yates Snowden, to a book of travels, which contains some graphic sketches of life in the low country of South Carolina, during the early years of the last century. A copy is owned by the Charleston Library.

I.

It is unfortunate that the author of neither one of these somewhat vague sketches was apparently acquainted at first hand with Davis's Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America, first printed in 1803, but reprinted with introduction and notes by A. J. Morrison in 1909. A reading of this interesting and well printed volume would

convince one that Davis was not in any sense a "colonial minstrel;" that he did not always style himself "John Davis of Coosawhatchie;" that he could scarcely be termed "an adopted son of South Carolina," by reason of the limited term of his sojourn there; and that he did not sketch South Carolina life during the early years of the nineteenth century, but during the closing years of the eighteenth century. It might be added that his pictures are colored with no pronounced sympathy for the life that he portrays. This can best be shown by citing passages from his Travels about the neighborhood of Charleston in 1798 and 1799:

It appears to me that in Carolina, the simplicity of the first colonists is obliterated, and that the present inhabitants strive to exceed each other in the vanities of life. Slight circumstances often mark the manners of a people. In the opulent families, there is always a negro placed on the look-out, to announce the coming of any visitant; and the moment a carriage or horseman is descried, each negro changes his every day garb for a magnificent suit of livery. As the negroes wear no shirts, this is quickly effected; and in a few moments a ragged fellow is metamorphosed into a spruce footman. And woe to them should they neglect it; for their master would think himself disgraced, and Sambo and Cuffy incur a severe flogging.1

In Carolina, the legislative and executive powers of the house belong to the mistress, the master has little to do with the administration; he is a monument of uxoriousness and passive endurance."

It may be incredible to some that the children of the most distinguished families in Carolina are suckled by negro women. Each child has its Momma, whose gestures it will necessarily copy. . . . If Rousseau in his Emile could inveigh against the French mother, who consigned her child to a woman of her own color to suckle, how would his indignation have been raised to behold a smiling babe tugging with its roseate lips at a dug of a size and color to affright a Satyr?3

Of the understanding of negroes, the masters in Carolina have a very mean opinion. But it is obvious to a stranger of discernment,

'Opus cit., ed. Morrison, p. 97.

2Ibid., p. 97.

Ibid., pp. 93-4.