"'Speak to me! he would do a devilish sight better to play dummy: for sure as he spoke, I should let fly at him, because I wouldn't know but he belonged to some of those far away tribes of Black-feet, or the likes of that.' "'But you do not really think that they look and speak any thing like the western savages, Damon?' said I. "'I'm smashed if I don't bet that I can put blankets and leggins on the whole tribe, and pass them through the Cherokee nation for friendly Black-feet.' "The incomparable Prima Donna (as she is called here) now made her first appearance; her voice is exquisite, Randolph, and her execution beyond the conception of an unsophisticated student. "The music is pleasing to the ear, and may touch an Italian heart, but it found no response from mine. I tell this to you in all sincerity and confidence, but it would lower a man, I fear, to say so in the fashionable circles. "'Well, Damon, would the Italian ladies pass for squaws?' "'No, no; they are better than the men, and they are right pretty too, if they didn't talk such outlandish gibberish; but that dark skinn'd man there, I swear Pete Ironsides would kick him if he was to go in my stable; for he hates an Injin, as I do an allegator; poor Pete! I reckon he thinks I'm skulped.' "'Pete is well cared for, I will guaranty,' said Lamar, very pathetically. "'Look! look!' exclaimed Damon; 'what's that under the green umbrella there, at the front of the stage among the lights?' "'That is the prompter, to put them right when they go wrong.' "'Yes, yes! I see, I see!' continued he; 'he gives them a wink every now and then.' "In the operas it is very frequently the case that one of the subordinate characters comes to the front of the stage after the principals have made their exit, and explains what rare sport is coming. "'What does that fellow slip out here every now and then like a dropped stitch for?' "We explained to him the meaning of it, as well as we understood it ourselves. "'Ay, ay! I see it now; he is the Nota Bene!' "We found great difficulty in getting Damon to understand, with his shrewd natural view of things, that an opera was nothing more than a common play; the parts being sung, instead of spoken. "'Now I wish my head may be knocked into a cocked-hat, if a man had told this to me of the Yorkers in old Kentuck, if I wouldn't have thought he was spinnin long yarns; there is no sense in it, nor there's no fun in it, as they all take it up there in the pews; if so moutbe now that they were all of my way of thinking, and would only join in a _leetle_ touch of the warwhoop, why we might show them fellers a little of the real Cherokee, that I rather suspicion they haven't seen.' "'Why, what would you do, Damon?'