She then outlined the course laid out by the "Friends in Council," lectures on astronomy, botany, natural history, all by eminent persons. They would not expect the Club to meet them on their own ground. They would come to that of their hearers, and would unfold to them what they were able to understand. Accordingly, Weir Mitchell discoursed to them on the Poison of Serpents, John La Farge on the South Sea Islands, Alexander Agassiz on Deep-Sea Dredging and the Panama Canal; while Mark Twain and "Hans Breitmann" made merry, each in his own inimitable fashion. The Town and Country Club had a long and happy career. No matter what heavy work she might have on hand for the summer, no sooner arrived at Newport than our mother called together her Governing Committee and planned out the season's meetings. It may have been for this Club that she wrote her "Parlor Macbeth," an extravaganza in which she appeared as "the impersonation of the whole Macbeth family." In the prologue she says:-- "As it is often said and supposed that a woman is at the bottom of all the mischief that is done under the sun, I appear and say that I am she, that woman, the female fate of the Macbeth family." In the monologue that follows, Lady Macbeth fairly lives before the audience, and in amazing travesty relates the course of the drama. She thus describes the visit of the weird sisters (the three Misses Macbeth) who have been asked to contribute some of "their excellent hell-broth and devilled articles" for her party. "At 12 M., a rushing and bustling was heard, and down the kitchen chimney tumbled the three weird sisters, finding everything ready for their midnight operations.... 'That hussy of a Macbeth's wife leaves us nothing to work with,' cried one. 'She makes double trouble for us.' 'Double trouble, double trouble,' they all cried and groaned in chorus, and presently fell into a sort of trilogy of mingled prose and verse which was enough to drive one mad. 'Where hast thou been? Sticking pigs. And where hast thou? Why, curling wigs Fit for a shake in German jigs And hoo! carew! carew!' * * * * * "'We must have Hecate now, can't do without her. Throw the beans over the broomstick and say boo!' And lo, Hecate comes, much like the others, only rather more so.... "Now they began to work in good earnest. And they had brought with them whole bottles of _sunophon_, and _sozodont_, and _rypophagon_, and _hyperbolism_ and _consternaculum_, and a few others. And in the whole went. And one stirred the great pot over the fire, while the others danced around and sang-- "'Black pepper and red, White pepper and grey, Tingle, tingle, tingle, tingle, Till it smarts all day.' "'Here's dyspepsia! Here's your racking headache of a morning. Here's podagra, and jaundice, and a few fits. And now it's done to a turn, and the weird sisters have done what they could for the family.'