CHAPTER FORTY-THREE




THE OMNIFIC AND GRANDIOSE INTERMEZZO OF THE WHISTLING COON.





   In the antechamber of the Rosicrician's cabinet stood a strangely carven pedestal, on which the young and elegant woman whom we have already introduced to the gentle reader as Flotilla was leaning. Her lustrous eyes exuded unfathomable sorrow as she gazed into the Magical Mirror of Zamboni. In those astral horizons she saw many a mystery ineffable, many a wonder mirific, many an arcanum irresolvable even in the limpid luminance of theophany. But, search as she might, her soul shrank from the Threshold of the Great White Way.


   (That, you see, is how we link Lytton and Irvin S. Cobb; that is how we get from Bologna to Broadway.)


   On the stage of a famous variety theatre, by Castor and Pollux, there stood a slight pale figure -- fill it up from the waste paper basket, please, Mr. Dollar-a-Syllable! -- his name don't matter; in the perfesh, he was The Whistling Coon. And in the audience was a -- oh! you know: I'm a tired novellissimist to-night -- call her Ethel. She wanted to get his job. She went to the stage door, and sent in her card. (By Serapis, this is a python of a story, cut it how you will!) He came out. They met. ``Walk as we talk?'' ``Yes.'' They walked. (And now my style's getting like Aime'e Gouraud's, or whoever wrote `Moon-madness' for her.) Well, presently the Whistling Coon said to Ethel: ``I suppose you have whistled before?'' She modestly replied: ``I hardly like to call it whistling, you know, to you.'' ``But you can whistle?'' ``Oh, well, I suppose I must say I can whistle.'' And he smiled a long, low, sad, subtle smile -- and they walked on. Now they were in the depths of the Park -- and he smiled a long, low, sad, subtle smile -- and he said ``Now you can't.''