His “wescut,” as he called it, he had brought, as he proudly declared, from Scotland, and the actors, as with one voice, had cried: “It looks the part, Sandy, it looks it!”
It was a short-waisted, low-necked vest of a plaid (of course) of red and green and blue and yellow, and the greatest of these was red, and it was velvet, and it had two crowded rows of shining, brass buttons. With quite unnecessary candor, his shirt proclaimed, through dragging wrinkle and straggling band, that it was of domestic manufacture; while an ancient black satin stock nearly choked the life out of him. And his hair--oh, Sandy, Sandy! His wife had curled it on a very small iron, and had then drawn the comb through it, thus setting it a-flying in a wild, red fuzz on whose edges the gaslight glittered, until he looked like some absurd, old Saint with his halo falling off backward!
As this figure of fun appeared, there was a ripple of laughter, and in a few minutes--in the expressive slang of to-day--the audience were “on” to him. The laughter grew and grew--and then that strange _strain_ of cruelty, that has come down to us from our ancient barbaric forefathers, and is so much easier to arouse in a crowd than in a single individual, was all alive. They thought they recognized a victim, and they rose to the occasion. They _baited_ him; they bombarded him with satirical applause; they demanded certain passages over again; they addressed him as Mr. Buz-fuz, and they had just reached the point of throwing things when the reading ended.
As MacIlhenny had no sense of the ridiculous, he could not distinguish the difference between being laughed _at_ and being laughed _with_, so it was all like fragrant incense to him, and he came off the stage, his crossed eyes blazing at the bridge of his nose, on each cheek bone a spot of scarlet and a burr on his tongue that made his first words of triumph utterly incomprehensible to those about him. Two of us there were who drew aside, and pitying him, spoke him fair and respectfully, but the others, meaning no harm, carrying on a jest, congratulated him extravagantly, and when he went out from the theatre that night the promise of the gods had been fulfilled, for MacIlhenny was literally mad!