" This poor girl does not seem to understand even
the rudiments of concealment. But she is "in her seventeenth,"
as the author phrases it, and that is her justification.
Leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis,
of course. It was their way down there. It is a good plain plan,
without any imagination in it. He will go out and stand at the
front door, and when these two come out he will "arrest Ambulinia
from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo," and thus make for himself
a "more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed
by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined." But, dear me,
while he is waiting there the couple climb out at the back window
and scurry home! This is romantic enough, but there is a lack
of dignity in the situation.
At this point McClintock puts in the whole of his curious play
--which we skip.
Some correspondence follows now. The bitter father and the
distressed lovers write the letters. Elopements are attempted.
They are idiotically planned, and they fail. Then we have several
pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing.
Another elopement is planned; it is to take place on Sunday,
when everybody is at church. But the "hero" cannot keep the secret;
he tells everybody. Another author would have found another
instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is
not McClintock's way.
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