[Transcribed from Pond's broadside poster.]

The scene at the "front of the house" in Whitney's last night was enough to make glad the heart of a manager. The sharp cries of "one, two, one, three" of the head usher rang out as he turned the well-dressed stream in ones and twos to the under-ushers. He stood like a rock at the head of the centre aisle and the stream poured in on him. It surged around him, but calm and immovable he stood, and it broke around him. He utilized it and turned the steam into rivulets that trickled down the different aisles like the separate arms of the delta of the great river beside which the Twain authors won their fame. The stream went in graceful cascades down the steps of the different channels into the parquet and innundated it. The theatre was a sea of faces.

The stage setting for this drama by two was of a nature calculated to inspire the authors with wonder at the wealth and splendor of Detroit interiors. Could Hartford insure a lovelier blue satin parlor suite? Could New Orleans exhibit a more gorgeous table-cover with a redder embroidered rose? The doors at the back were twain, and the lace hung in cables over the middle entrance.

A man, whose shadow was now and then projected against the wings, snapped on the footlight gas. Then with a crack the overhead illumination flooded the stage with light, and a third thrill awaited the audience when the same invisible magician with the lightning touch sprang the big chandelier into a dazzling combination of jets. "It is like the President at Washington starting the exhibition in the South to-day," said a lady to her escort.

These little electric excitements led up the audience to the event of the evening -- the entrance of the great American novelist, the humorist leading slightly, as they say in sporting circles. The sensation that had been caused by a brilliant-headed stage boy coming in and moving one of the blue chairs up to the footlights had subsided, and when the real actors came on there was a grand burst of applause. Mark Twain, drifting round the table to the front, leaving Cable kind of straddled on the other side, drawled out:

"Lays sun gen'lmen, I introduce to you Mr. Caaa-ble."

And with a wave of his hand he left his partner before the multidude, and retired R.E.

Mr. Cable looked down into the empty orchestra and saw on the chairs where the fiddlers used to sit a motley array of overcoats and sacques that showed him plainly that he was not in the balmy climate of the sunny South. Then he lifted his face, and the audience got a good, square look at him.

His make-up was good. The wrinkles on his brows looked for all the world as if he had been for years in constant surprise at his own success. His whiskers were long and pointed, and they ran up his cheek on either side until they met the smooth black hair. A person had the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps they were held in place by a string concealed over the top of his head, and that they might at any moment drop off. His moustaches were of the St. John (not the Evangelist, but the Prohibitionist) type, and their parted ends drooped down to a level with his pointed beard -- three peculiar points about Cable.

He seemed just a trifle like a nervous man who had got his nervousness under pretty good control, but couldn't quite make up his mind whether it was better to keep his hands clasped behind his dress-coat, or in front of it with his thumbs up.

The first Cable dispatch was that exquisite conversation between Narcisse and the Richlings, where the former tries to get John to "baw" him some of the cash Dr. Sevier has placed to the credit of the unfortunate couple.

"I wuz juz coming at yo' 'ouse, Mistoo Itchlin. Yesseh, I wuz juz sitting in my 'oom afteh dinneh, envelop'in in my 'obe de chambre, when all at once I says to myself, 'Faw distwaction I will go and see Mistoo Itchlin.'" It was distraction indeed to the Richlings. He saw "Mistoo Itchlin" in every sense of the word, and "baw'd" the last cent he had.

If Mr. Cable would come on the stage and sit down on the chair and have a good actor do the talking there might be some improvement. There was a touch here and there of amateurishness and a certain self-consciousness that rather interfered with the recital. Still, it is doubtful if any one could have given the Creole dialect as well as Cable himself.

In retiring, amidst most enthusiastic applause, he took three backward steps, made a bow, three more, then another bow, three more, and out.

There was no burst of music between the acts. The overcoats and things occupied the orchestra chairs with discretion and silence. This, of course, gave Mark a great advantage. The people were in good humor from the start.

"Mark the Perfect Man," saith the quotation. For "man" read "humorist." Nothing could be more deliciously droll than his very movement toward that embroidered tablecloth. He came in with his head forward and looked like a man who had lost something on the stage and wasn't exactly sure that he would be able to find it. When he faced the music -- or rather the place where the music used to be -- he looked at the audience with a puzzled, half-careworn expression, as if he had met the people before, but couldn't just at the moment recall their names. His half-closed eyes appeared to peer out from under the bushy eyebrows with a puzzled gaze that had been regarding life seriously for forty odd years, and couldn't quite make it out. His bristly, plentiful hair was brushed back as if he had been born that way. It looked as if it never could become towsled up or come down over his eyes, and it was tinged with gray. It seems incredible that Mark Twain should ever have gray hair, but such are the indications.

His left hand automatically sought his trousers pocket, and slid in there, leaving the thumb at liberty.

He told his stories with that inimitable Down East drawl of his, and took his audience into his confidence with a serious unconventionality that was most delightful. When he got through he ambled off the stage with a little trot that was as funny as his altogether diffident entrance. He reminds one in his serious fun remotely of Raymond in "Mulberry Sellers." He also reminds you of someone you have seen before, you can't tell who, but you are friends with him, for old acquaintance sake, from the first. The audience laughed so heartily at his stories that laughing became a pain, and then, as Saxe says, "Cable like a poultice came, to heal the blows of Twain."

The Creole songs that Cable sang in place of one of his recitations were enthusiastically encored.

Mr. Cable should give up the funny business entirely to Twain. He should stick to the serious parts of his book with the exception of Narcisse, and let Mark bring the laughter. He is enough and several to spare.

"Mary's Night Ride" was most graphically given by Mr. Cable. He brought the picture vividly before the eyes of his audience and held them spell-bound to the last word. It was the very perfection of intense word-painting. Still he should have shot that navy six a little quicker. The "once--twice--thrice" should have been given with every spring of the flying horse. "The tart rejoinders of his navy six" rang out in the night air, you may depend on it, Mr. Cable, as quickly as the brave spy could pull the trigger, and by the way, that sentence, "The tart rejoinders of his navy six," is one of the most graphic ever penned by the hand of man.

Twain gave his version of the celebrated st---st---st---st--- whe-e-w-a--ammering story, which differs from that of Col. Sellers, and is infinitely better than Raymond's way of it.

In conclusion it may be said that while the stage settings had somewhat of a sameness in them to a people educated up to the scenery of the "Silver King" and such, still the combination must save a good deal in baggage cars, and if we missed the background of the Alps while Twain was in his "Trying Situation," or "The Street in New Orleans" while Ristofalo was before us, we should remember that our loss was their gain. Taking it from first to last the Twain-Cable entertainment was by all odds the most enjoyable thing of the season, a sweet boon to the tired theatre-goer and a joy forever to the callous cynical man in the box office. When shall we, Twain, meet again?