Harvard Stories: Sketches of the UndergraduatePost, Waldron Kintzing
History
Harvard Stories: Sketches of the Undergraduate
Post, Waldron Kintzing
College stories, American; College students -- Fiction; Harvard University -- Fiction
"All went well until the battle scene. They had put us all on the same
side; in fact, we constituted the entire army of Brutus--that was
another evidence of greenness in the management. The battle had been
raging mildly for some time. We had marched and counter-marched, and had
been reviewed and exhorted two or three times, without even getting a
glimpse of the enemy. At last it came to the scene where Brutus'
aggregation gets driven across the stage by Antony's offering a
desperate resistance. Cassius had been killed, young Cato was going to
be captured, and everything was going to the bow-wows. While we were
standing in the wings along with Antony's army, waiting to go on, Jim de
Laye said, 'Hang it, let's put a little real good acting into this
thing; these stage scraps are too woodeny.' Of course I did my best to
restrain this idea among my companions, but it became popular at once in
spite of anything I could say. I must confess I always had rather a
desire myself to see that oily-mouthed peep of a Marc Antony well
thrashed. The next minute we had to go across the back of the stage,
hotly contesting every inch of the way with our trusty wooden brands,
two up and two down. About half way over, that crazy Jim de Laye opened
the ball by smiting his man hip and thigh and other parts, in the most
life-like manner. The other supe hit back in just anger, and there was
an instant rally of the Brutus forces. My man was a little fellow, and I
did him up in time to see an entirely new feature introduced in the
scene. Marc Antony himself suddenly appeared, hard pressed by a togaed
citizen. The way he got there was this--correct me, Jack, if I make any
mistake in this part of the history. Blathers, as I told you, had been
left curled up under a coat in the dressing-room. Some of the employees
had found him there, however, untied him, and started in to play with
him. Mr. Blathers, finding himself in strange company, slipped away from
them and went looking for his master. Just as the battle scene began, he
arrived at the wings, where Marc Antony was waiting to go on. Antonius
was in very bad humor about something. He asked in fluent Latin, 'What
the ---- that dog was doing there?' and made a kick at Blathers. I guess
Blathers was in much the same mood, for he turned around and effected a
prompt connection with the calf of Marc Antony's leg. He was a
disappointed dog; he got his mouth full of horsehair. Antony wasn't
touched, and let Blathers have it with the other foot.
"Now, Jack had not been assigned to the army, and was off duty in that
scene. He was standing in the wings in Roman citizen's clothes, trying
to flirt with the vestal virgins.
"Hold on," interrupted Jack, "you told me to correct any mistake. That's
one."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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