"Wal, now, you did it up as cute as a razor, didn't you?" sez I. "It was eenamost enough to make a feller think that you was in arnest, wasn't it? but then I aint quite sich a green horn as some chaps that come from the country, and know what's what. I haint seen anything that tickled me so much as that--that----" "Comic song," sez he. "Oh," sez I, as quick as wink, "you needn't take a feller up afore he's down. I was jest a going to say that you raly are a sneezer at saying over them comic songs, and sartinly you do look as nat'ral as life. In course I knew there warn't no wall-eyed critter a bidding, and thought I'd jest see if you was as cute a looking critter close to. More than that, I've got a notion to take a peak at the fixins back of the curtain close tu--so s'posing you and I jest walk among them hills, and housen, and trees, that looked so plaguey cool and shady." I kept on a talking so that he needn't see how tarnal sheepish I felt, arter making sich a coot of myself as to believe he'd sold Miss Elssler in rale arnest. "Why," sez he, as good natured as could be, "here you are, right in the midst of all the trees and hills and houses that you saw in front." "Oh, now, you git out!" sez I, "I aint green enough to swaller that, any how." He looked round at a pile of old wooden partitions, daubed over with paint, and a standing edgeways, and sort of slantindicular, under the naked rafters and hay lofts, and sez he-- "I'm in arnest now--this is all the scenery that you saw from the front. You stand on the stage, jest back of where I sung my comic song, and that is the curtain." "What, that old sloop sail?" sez I. "How you du talk! I sniggers, but I can't believe it." "Jest go to the curtain and look through the edge there," sez he. And with that he went with me, and pulled back the edge of the curtain, and I gin a sudden peak through. Sure enough, the theatre was right before me, chuck full of folks, jest as I'd left it; and the pen full of fiddlers, was a streaming out the music right under my nose, till I couldn't hear myself think. When I turned round agin, and see how awful dark and chilly every thing looked, and found myself wandering with Mr. Williams among a hull univarse of posts, and boards, and lamps, and painted cloth, I felt chilled through and through, as if I'd got ketched in a rain storm, and had found kiver in a saw mill. Nothing but a rickety old barn, or a lot full of white pine stumps, could look half so dismal. "Wal," sez I, "if this is the theatre, I pity the poor critters that's got to get a living in it, any how." "It's bad enuf," sez Mr. Williams, a twistifying up his face sort of comical, and yit looking as if he'd bust out a crying if you said two words more, "its bad enuf, but then we put the best side out."