Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

Gom. Where have you concealed your wives and children?

Oro. In the hearts of their husbands and fathers.

Piz.
Oro.

Knowest thou Alonzo ?

Know him! Alonzo! Our nation's benefactor' the guardian angel of Peru!

Piz. By what has he merited that title?

Oro. By not resembling thee.

Piz. Who is this Rolla, joined with Alonzo in command?

name.

[ocr errors]

Cora wa

r

S

Oro. I will answer that; for I love to speak the hero', Rolla, the kinsman of the king, is the idol of ou army. In war, a tiger; in peace, a lamb. once betrothed to him, but finding she preferred Alonzo, he resigned his claim for Cora's happiness.

Piz. Romantic savage! I shall meet this Rolla soon. Thou hadst better not ! The terrors of his noble

Oro.

eye would strike thee dead.

Gom. Silence, or tremble!

Oro. Beardless robber! I never yet have trembled before man-Why before thee, thou less than man!

Gom.
Oro.

Another word, audacious heathen, and I strike! Strike, Christian! then boast among thy fellows : "I too have murdered a Peruvian.'

[ocr errors]

SECOND SCENE.-Sentinel.

ROLLA AND ALONZO.

[Enter Rolla, disguised as a monk.]

Rolla. Inform me, friend, is Alonzo, the Peruvian, con

fined in this dungeon?

Sentinel. He is.

Rolla. I must speak with him.

Sent. You must not.

Rolla. He is my friend.

Sent. Not if he were your brother.

Rolla. What is to be his fate?

Sent. He dies at sunrise.

Rolla. Ha! then I am come in time.

Sent. Just to witness his death.

Rolla. [ Advancing towards the door. ] Soldier-I must speak with him.

Sent. [Pushing him back with his gun.] Back! Back! it is impossible.

Rolla. I do entreat you, but for one moment.

Sent. You entreat in vain-my orders are most strict. Rolla. Look on this wedge of massive gold! Look on these precious gems! In thy land they will be wealth for thee and thine, beyond thy hope or wish. Take them; they are thine; let me but pass one moment with Alonzo. Sent. Away! Wouldst thou corrupt me? Me! an old Castilian!-I know my duty better.

Rolla. Soldier! hast thou a wife?

Sent. I have.

Rolla. Hast thou children?

Sent. Four honest, lively boys.

Rolla.

Where didst thou leave them?

Sent. In my native village, in the very cot where I was

born.

Rolla.

Dost thou love thy wife and children?

Sent. Do I love them! God knows my heart,—I do. Rolla. Soldier! imagine thou wert doomed to die a cruel death in a strange land—what would be thy last request?

Sent. That some of my comrades should carry my dy. ing blessing to my wife and children.

Rolla. What if that comrade were at thy prison door, and should there be told, thy fellow soldier dies at sunrise, yet thou shalt not for a moment see him, nor shalt thou bear his dying blessing to his poor children, or his wretched wife, what wouldst thou think of him who thus could drive thy comrade from the door?

[ocr errors]

Sent. How?

Rolla. Alonzo has a wife and child; and I am come but to receive for her, and for her poor babe, the last bles sing of my friend.

Sent. Go in.

[Exit Sentinel.]

Rolla. [Calls] Alonzo! Alonzo !

[Enter Alonzo, speaking as he comes in.]

Alonzo. How! is the hour elapsed? Well, I am ready.

Rolla. Alonzo- know me!

Alon. Rolla! O Rolla! how didst thou pass the guard?

Rolla. There is not a moment to be lost in words. This disguise I tore from the dead body of a friar as I passed our field of battle. It has gained me entrance to thy dungeon; now take it thou, and fly.

Alon. And Rolla

Rolla. Will remain here in thy place.

Alon.

rack me.

And die for me! No! rather eternal tortures

Rolla. I shall not die, Alonzo. It is thy life, Pizarro' seeks, not Rolla's; and thy arm may soon deliver me from prison. Or, should it be otherwise, I am as a blighted tree in the desert; nothing lives beneath my shelter. Thou art a husband and a father; the being of a lovely wife and helpless infant depends upon thy life. Go! go! Alonzo, not to save thyself, but Cora and thy child.

Alon. Urge me not thus, my friend, I am prepared to die in peace.

Rolla. To die in peace! devoting her you have sworn to live for, to madness, misery, and death!

Alon. Merciful heavens!

Rolla. If thou art yet irresolute, Alonzo-now, mark me well. Thou knowest that Rolla never pledged his word and shrunk from its fulfilment. Know then, if thou art proudly obstinate, thou shalt have the desperate triumph of seeing Rolla perish by thy side.

Alon. O Rolla! you distract me! Wear you the robe, and though dreadful the necessity, we will strike down the guard and force our passage.

Rolla. What the soldier, on duty here?

Alon. Yes; else, seeing two, the alarm will be instant death.

Rolla. For my nation's safety, I would not harm him. That soldier, mark me, is a man! All are not men that wear the human form. He refused my prayers, refused

my gold, denying to admit-till his own feelings bribed him. I will not risk a hair of that man's head, to save my heart-strings from consuming fire. But haste! A moment's farther pause, and all is lost.

Alon. Rolla, I fear thy friendship drives me from hon. or and from right.

Rolla. Did Rolla ever counsel dishonor to his friend? [Throwing the friar's garment over his shoulders.] There! conceal thy face. Now God be with thee.-Kotzebue.

This interesting Dialogue is taken from Kotzebue's "Pizarro." Kotzebue was born at Weimar, in 1761, and was assassinated in 1819, by Sandt, a fanatical student of Jena. In the scene between Rolla and the sentinel, "the voice of nature speaks." Rolla appeals, succescfully to the feelings of the sentinel, not by gold, but by the power of irresistible eloquence. It is true, as Rolla says, that "all are not men, that wear the human form," that is to say, some men are destitute of those feelings of humanity which pervaded the bosom of the "soldier." He was truly and emphatically a man, for admitting Rolla, and so was Rolla, for solemnly pledging himself not to see injured "a hair of that man's head." The dialogue, being throughout highly rhetorical, constitutes a very good elocutionary exercise.

ON CULTIVATING THE FACULTY OF SPEECH

1. The power of utterance, each man should cultivate according to his ability. A man was not made to shut up his mind in itself, but to give it voice and to exchange it for other minds. Speech is one of our grand distinctions from the brute. Our power over others lies not so much in the amount of thought within us as the power of bringing it out. A man of more than ordinary intellectual vigor, may for want of expression, be a cipher without significance in society.

2. And not only does a man influence others, but he greatly aids his own intellect, by giving distinct and forcible utterance to his thoughts. We understand ourselves better, our conceptions grow clearer by the very effort to make them clear to another. Our social rank, too, depends a good deal on our power of utterance. The prin

cipal distinctions between what are called gentlemen and the vulgar, lies in this, that the latter are awkward in manners and are especially wanting in propriety, clearness, grace, and force of utterance.

3. A man who cannot open his lips without breaking a rule of grammar, without showing in his dialect or brogue, or uncouth tones, his want of cultivation, or without darkening his meaning by a confused, unskilful mode of communication, cannot take the place to which perhaps his native good sense entitles him.

4. To have intercourse with respectable people we must - speak their language. Grammar and correct pronunciation are not trifles, nor are they superfluous to any class of people. They give a man access to social advantages on which his improvement very much depends. The power of utterance should be included by all plans of self culture. Dr. Channing.

SCENE BETWEEN CAPTAIN BERTRAM AND JACK BOWLIN.

Bowlin. Good day to your honor.
Captain. Good day, honest Jack.

Bowl. To day is my Captain's birth day.
Capt. I know it.

Bowl. I am heartily glad on the occasion.
Capt. I know that, too.

Bowl. Yesterday your honor broke your sea-foam pipe. Capt. Well, sir booby, and why must I be put in mind of it? it was stupid enough to be sure, but hark ye, Jack, all men at times do stupid actions, but I never met with one who liked to be reminded of them.

Bowl. I meant no harm, your honor. It was only a kind of introduction to what I was a going to say. I have been buying this pipe-head and ebony-tube, and if the thing is not too bad, and my captain will take such a present on his birth day, for the sake of poor old Jack-

Capt. Is that what you would be at-come, let's see.
Bowl. To be sure, it is not sea-foam; but my captain

« ÎnapoiContinuă »