Page:Foggerty.djvu/268

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264
A Stage Play.

common (here is an opportunity of introducing hits at High Church mummeries, with imitations of popular preachers, by Wilkinson, the low comedian). Now to introduce the Archbishop. Since his renunciation of his daughter he has become a changed man. Too haughty to admit his error frankly, and take her and her husband to his heart and palace, he is nevertheless painfully conscious that he has acted harshly; and, in a spirit of secret self-humiliation, he disguises himself as one of the undignified clergy, and in that capacity goes through a house-to-house visitation. The natural course of his duty brings him to the humble abode of his daughter and son-in-law. He enters unperceived (of course in ignorance of the fact that it is their abode) during Wilkinson's imitations, and overhears a touching scene, in which his daughter indignantly rebukes Wilkinson for giving an imitation of her Most Reverend father's pulpit peculiarities. The old man, utterly softened by this unexpected touch of filial affection, comes forward, and, in broken accents, admits both the correctness of the imitation, and the filial respect that induced his daughter to check it, folds her and her husband to his heart, and gives him the next presentation to a valuable living—the present incumbent (who is present) being an aged man who cannot, in the course of nature, expect to survive many months. On this touching scene the curtain descends.

Here is an outline of a plot which Facile believes will answer every purpose. The Archbishop, the daughter, and the Harlequin will afford three excellent acting parts. The manager will be a bit of "character" for