Permanent stage-doors we have none. That which is permanent cannot be
removed, for if removed it soon ceases to be permanent. What stationary
absurdity can vie with that ligneous barricado, which, decorated with
frappant and tintinabulant appendages, now serves, as the entrance of
the lowly cottage, and now as the exit of a lady's bed-chamber; at one
time insinuating plastic Harlequin into a butcher's shop, and at another,
yawning as the flood-gate to precipitate the Cyprians of St. Giles's into
the embraces of Macheath. To elude this glaring absurdity, to give to
each respective mansion the door which the carpenter would doubtless have
given, we vary our portal with the varying scene, passing from deal to
mahogany, and from mahogany to oak, as the opposite claims of cottage,
palace, or castle may appear to require.
Amid the general hum of gratulation which flatters us in front, it is
fit that some regard should be paid to the murmurs of despondence that
assail us in the rear. They, as I have elsewhere expressed it, "who live
to please," should not have their own pleasures entirely overlooked.
The children of Thespis are general in their censures of the architect
in having placed the locality of exit at such a distance from the oily
irradiators which now dazzle the eyes of him who addresses you. I am,
cries the Queen of Terrors, robbed of my fair proportions. When the
king-killing Thane hints to the breathless auditory the murders he means
to perpetrate in the castle of Macduff "ere his purpose cool," so vast
is the interval he has to travel before he can escape from the stage,
that his purpose has even time to freeze. Your condition, cries the Muse
of Smiles, is hard, but it is cygnet's down in comparison with mine. The
peerless peer of capers and congees has laid it down as a rule, that the
best good thing uttered by the morning visitor should conduct him rapidly
to the doorway, last impressions vieing in durability with first. But
when on this boarded elongation it falls to my lot to say a good thing,
to ejaculate "keep moving," or to chaunt "hic hoc horum genetivo," many
are the moments that must elapse ere I can hide myself from public vision
in the recesses of O.P. or P.S.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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