Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/766

756 that night, “ His is a true genius, real and strong, though just now it is groping in the dark.”

A good many years passed away, and Mr. Owens seemed to have departed with them. Mose, Eiizer, and Jakey grew to be only shadowy memories, even in the Bowery. The once noble fireman was dead and buried,—buried out of sight and mind, “deeper than e’er plummet sounded.”

When Mr. Owens emerged again, it was not at night, before the foot-lights, but in the broad light of day. His audience this time were some Alpine guides, who, gathering about him, beheld the amiable comedian once more waving the American flag, after the fashion of the old Bowery days, but now from the highest attainable point of Mont Blanc. Having thus asserted his nationality, he came down again, and in concert halls showed us some well-painted pictures illustrative of his ascent, and, in a pleasant, gossiping way, told us how it was done.

But one night Mont Blanc, like Mose, failing to attract, Mr. Owens gracefully closed his remarks, and rolled up his pictures and buried them in a long, coffin-like pine box among the useless properties and rusty traps that fill the cellar of the old Front Street Theatre. And there they lie to this day.

But where was Mr. Owens ? Was he buried along with the decaying pictures of Mont Blanc ? No concert or lyceumhall proprietor smilingly welcomed him, no manager announced his first appearance in blank years. Where was Mr. Owens ? A great many curious people, hangers-on of the theatres and others, asked that question without eliciting any very satisfactory reply, until one day a rumor made its way up from the City of Monuments, that the comedian had retired to his farm for study, and had developed a rather eccentric affection for his overseer, an old fellow who served as a type of the shrewd Yankee farmer, drifted away from his moorings, down East, — a man somewhat partial to his ox-team, to apple-sauce, lawsuits, and reminiscences of his grandfather, who had fought in the war of the Revolution.

Dropping into the Broadway Theatre one evening, in the winter of 65, we had confirmation of the truth of this rumor; for there, upon the stage on which the elder Wallack and a host of noble players had shone, we saw that same old Yankee ox-driver, descendant of Revolutionary sires. Perker was the name by which we knew him in the days of the Baltimore farm, but in the Broadway Theatre he was known as Solon Shingle. No matter what his name, however, it was Perker we saw, — Perker from broad-brimmed felt hat to the somewhat too large cowhide boots. Ox-team, old white coat, tobacco, impertinent curiosity, queer speech, and all the rest of that old fellow’s physical and mental fibre, were there reproduced before us. It was not the dress only that Mr. Owens had slipped on over his own, but he had crept into the very nature of the man, catching the trick of moving each spring and lever of his thought, habit, and feeling. In the same degree, and just as Mr. Owens’s Mose was a living photograph of the noble fireman, as he existed in the eyes of the Bowery audiences, was Solon Shingle a literal translation into comedy of Perker, who was typical of the uncouth, litigious, maundering countryman. Both were marked by the same excellences ; both were strong, fibrous developments of common nature, and characters such as no living American player but Owens could elaborate.

In “Solon Shingle” the groping genius of the comedian had found light. It was not, as we were forced to admit, a pure genius ; the light was somewhat dim, and not unmixed with some grossness of conception and execution; yet for more than two years this character was in Mr. Owens’s hands the delight of the theatre. “Solon Shingle” became a tangible reality, whose personal identity was gravely discussed by old and young, from the Points to the Avenues. Everybody went to see him, and