"
The words were hardly spoken before the old lady rose upright as a tower.
She then made an oblique preliminary sweep, and came down with such a
courtesy as the young had never seen.
James Quin, not to disgrace his generation, attempted a corresponding
bow, for which his figure and apoplectic tendency rendered him unfit; and
while he was transacting it, the graceful Cibber stepped gravely up, and
looked down and up the process with his glass, like a naturalist
inspecting some strange capriccio of an orang-outang. The gymnastics of
courtesy ended without back-falls--Cibber lowered his tone.
"You are right, Bracy. It is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent;
but his Othello, now, Bracy! be just--his Othello!"
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried she; "I thought it was Desdemona's little
black boy come in without the tea-kettle."
Quin laughed uproariously.
"It made me laugh a deal more than Mr. Quin's Falstaff. Oh, dear! oh,
dear!"
"Falstaff, indeed! Snuff!" In the tone of a trumpet.
Quin secretly revoked his good opinion of this woman's sense.
"Madam," said the page, timidly, "if you would but favor us with a
specimen of the old style
"Well, child, why not? Only what makes you mumble like that? but they all
do it now, I see. Bless my soul! our words used to come out like
brandy-cherries; but now a sentence is like raspberry-jam, on the stage
and off.
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