NOW the very ultimatum of degeneracy, in the opinion of these simple good people, was approaching; for now the officers, encouraged by the success of all their projects for amusement, resolved to new fashion and enlighten those amiable novices whom their former schemes had attracted within the sphere of their influence; and, for this purpose, a private theatre was fitted up, and preparations made for acting a play. Except the Schuylers and their adopted family, there was not, perhaps, one of the natives who understood what was meant by a play. And by this time, the town, once so closely united by intermarriages and numberless other ties, which could not exist in any other state of society, were divided into two factions; one consisting almost entirely of such of the younger class, as, having a smattering of New-York education, and a little more of dress and vivacity, or, perhaps, levity, than the rest, were eager to mingle in the society, and adopt the manners of those strangers. It is but just, however, to add, that only a few of the more estimable were included in this number; these, however they might have been captivated with novelty and plausibility, were too much attached to their older relations to give them pain, by an intimacy with people to whom an impious neglect of duties the most sacred, was generally imputed, and whose manner of treating their inferiors, at that distance from the control of higher powers, was often such as to justify the imputation of cruelty, which the severity of military punishments had given rise to. The play, however, was acted in a barn, and pretty well attended, notwithstanding the good Domine’s earnest charges to the contrary. It was the Beaux Stratagem; no favourable specimen of the delicacy or morality of the British theatre; and as for the wit it contains, very little of that was level to the comprehension of the novices who were there first initiated into a knowledge of the magic of the scene, yet they “laughed consumedly,” as Scrub says, and actually did so, “because they were talking of him.” They laughed at Scrub’s gestures and appearance: and they laughed very heartily at seeing the gay young ensigns, whom they had been used to dance with, flirting fans, displaying great hoops, and with painted cheeks and coloured eyebrows, sailing about in female habiliments. This was a jest palpable and level to every understanding; and it was not only an excellent good one, but lasted a long while; for every time they looked at them when restored to their own habits, they laughed anew at the recollection of their late masquerade. “It is much,” says Falstaff, “that a lie with a grave face, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow who never had the ache in his shoulders.” One need only look back to the first rude efforts at comic humour which delighted our fathers, to know what gross and feeble jests amuse the mind, as yet a stranger to refinement. The loud and