When the curtain went down _Hamlet_ was too exhausted to get up, and instantly everybody rushed to the rescue; those he had slaughtered but a few minutes before, forgot their mortal wounds, and hastened to the murderer with something to drink. The _King_ rushed up with a pewter mug of beer; _Horatio_ presented the brandy-bottle; the _Ghost_ handed him a glass of gin and sugar; the _Queen_ gave him the little end of a Bologna sausage and a piece of cheese; the stage carpenter, in his bewilderment, could think of nothing but the glue-pot; the property man hastened to his aid with a tin cup full of rose-pink, and a plate-full of property apple-dumplings (ingeniously but deceptively constructed out of canvas and bran), while an insane scene-shifter first deluged him with water, and then offered him the bucket to dry himself with. [Illustration] John Spout, who had been behind the curtain, and witnessed this last performance, immediately came out, borrowed Wagstaff's notebook, and left therein his pictorial reminiscence of this scene as follows: Overdale had been profuse in his explanations of the many curious scenes, and Wagstaff had noted down his words carefully in his memorandum-book. Once when the _Ghost_ tripped and fell through the scenery, caving in the side of a brick house, and kicking his spiritual heels through the belfry of a church in the background, Overdale said that this was _Ophelia_, who had been taken suddenly crazy, and in her frenzy had imagined it necessary to hasten to the nearest grocery for a bar of soap to saw her leg off with. _Polonius_, he explained, was _Horatio_, and _Hamlet_ was a little boy who run on errands for the cook of the palace, by which culinary appellation he designated the Queen of Denmark. He said the plot of the piece was, that the king wanted to marry the cook, but her relatives objected to the alliance, because his majesty hadn't got shirts enough for a change. All of which was carefully written down by Wagstaff, with divers alterations, emendations, additions, and extemporaneous illustrations, by John Spout. This last-named individual asserts to the present time that he cannot tell who were the most humbugged--the people who paid their money, and laughed at the play under the impression that it was a farce, or the unfortunates who performed the play, laboring under the hallucination that they were acting tragedy. All were, however, satisfied, that it was a kink of the Elephant's tail, which he has not yet uncurled in any city of America--save Gotham. MRS. THROUGHBY DAYLIGHT'S FANCY DRESS JAM. "Black spirits and white, Red spirits and grey, Mingle, mingle"----