“Where,” I exclaimed as I surveyed this show-card of a fast generation, “O! where have our children vanished?  Take from childhood the sparkling water of its purity—­the sugar of its innocent affections—­its ardent but refreshing spirits—­and what, ah! what have we left?”

“Nothing,” said the melancholy voice at my elbow.  “Absolutely nothing save the mint and the straw!”

And he was right, my dear PUNCHINELLO, he was right.

SAGINAW DODD.

* * * * *

“SOLEMN SILENCE.”

Perhaps very few persons—­and especially very few members of the Republican party—­are aware that a monument to ABRAHAM LINCOLN has at last been completed, and that it has been placed on the site allotted for it in Union Square.  It is very creditable to the Republican Party that they exercised such control over their feelings when the day for unveiling the LINCOLN Monument arrived.  Some parties might have made a demonstration on the occasion of post-mortuary honors being accorded to a leader whom they professed to worship while he lived, and whom they demi-deified after his death.  No such extravagant folly can be laid at the door of the Republican Party.  “Let bygones be bygones” is their motto.  They allowed their “sham ABRAHAM,” in heroic bronze, to be hoisted on to his pedestal in Union Square in solitude and silence.  That was commendable.  A live ass is better than a dead lion; and so the Republican Party, who consider themselves very much alive, went to look after their daily thistles and left their dead lion in charge of a policeman.

* * * * *

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

LOTTA is lithe; (which is alliterative,) pretty, piquant, and addicted to the banjo.  The latter characteristic is inseparable from her.  In whatever situation the dramatist may place her, whether in a London drawing-room or a Cockney kitchen, whether on an Algerian battle-field or in a California mining-camp, she is certain to produce the inevitable banjo, and to sing the irrepressible comic song.  In fact, her plays are written not for LOTTA, but for LOTTA’S banjo.  The dramatist takes the presence of the banjo as the central fact of his drama, and weaves his plot around it.  His play is made on the model of that celebrated drama written to introduce Mr. CRUMMLES’S pump and tubs.  Thus does he preserve the sacred unity of LOTTA and the banjo.

Heart’s Ease—­in which she is now playing at NIBLO’S Garden, is plainly born of the banjo, and lives for that melodious instrument alone.  The author said to himself, “A California mining-camp would be a nice place for a banjo solo.”  Wherefore he conceived the camp, with a chorus of red-shirted miners.  Wherefore too, he created a comic Yankee who should be eccentric enough to bring a banjo to the camp, and a lover who should be charmed by its touching strains.  It required a prologue and three acts to enable him to successfully introduce the banjo.  In a somewhat condensed form, these acts and this prologue are here set forth.