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afternoon—my having first borrowed from the tavern owner a blue potato barrow in which to wheel the private back to our lodgings. “Hoist, hoist your flagons, roisterers all,” he sang from the confines of the barrow. “For if summer be arrived, soon come the withering rimes of fall. Tooleree, toolera, tooleroo!”

9
    T HE NEXT MORNING the private awoke with a throbbing head and a tongue, as he put it, “as large as a full-grown buffalo’s.” But his expectations of being lionized in Flynt’s
Times of New York
precipitated him from bed. He rousted me out and inquired how, in my estimation, his presentation of
The Tragical History
had gone.
    â€œSplendidly,” I said. “No question, uncle. You put on an exhibition to be remembered.”
    He said he was certain of it, and that however unappreciative of his lecture the haughty academical intelligentsia of Boston town had been, and however undiscerning, good Editor Flynt and the
Times
would see him right and vindicate his reputation as an artist and a gentleman.
    All this while he was shaving. But when he opened the door and stepped outside, all besoaped, to take in the morning air, he tripped over the potato barrow and was obliged to perform a very intricate fandango to keep from slitting his throat with his own razor.
    â€œWhy, Ticonderoga, is this plebeian conveyance blocking the way?”
    â€œI brought your honor home from the play in it last evening—or rather this morning,” I said.
    â€œWell, for the love of Jehovah, Ti, trundle it down to the
Times
and bring back as many copies of today’s paper as it will hold. I shall order us a celebratory breakfast.”
    When I arrived back at the Tipsy Argonaut with the papers, my uncle was dressed in his full knight’s gear, and the captain of the
Lord Baltimore
was with him. I sat down at their table. My uncle clapped me on the back and cried up coffee with sweet cream, hot glazed rolls, and clay pipes all around for a smoke of hemp. Then, leaning back in his chair like a sultan, he bade me read his notice aloud to the assemblage, which, apart from myself and the ship’s captain, consisted mainly of fishmongers, sailors, and ladies of the evening just arriving from their employment.
    â€œUncle, are you certain—?”
    â€œYes, yes, Ti, read on.”
    Clearing my throat several times, I began to read aloud from the
Times,
as follows. “‘Last evening, our city was treated to an exhibition of sovereign entertainment, a play from the pen of one Private True T. Kinneson, recently arrived in New York from Vermont.’”
    â€œâ€˜Sovereign entertainment,’” my uncle exclaimed. “Jesu, that’s good. Did you hear that, my dear ladies and gentlemen? I must write a public apology in the
Times
to the excellent people of New York for ever supposing that the Dev—that the Gentleman from Vermont, ha ha—would be allowed to dwell for one hour in their fair city. Read on, Ticonderoga.”
    â€œPlease, uncle, you must not break in on me,” I said. “To continue. ‘The play, which we shall come to presently, was performed at the stately old Orpheus Theater, a landmark of our noble city, though recently reduced to providing quarters for a circus of curiosities, with the design of raising funds for the author to lead an expedition to the Pacific Ocean.’”
    â€œThat’s good,” my uncle said. “That can only help our greater purpose. But come to the matter here, nephew. What says Mr. Flynt of my
Tragical History
?”
    â€œWell, uncle, since you seem bent on hearing the rest, I won’t try to dissuade you. ‘The play itself, insofar as this commentator is fit to judge, is the greatest farce ever written. Juvenile in conception, violent in execution, puerile, nay, prurient, in its attempts at humor, and in the most vile taste,
Ethan Allen
violates all known principles of