Alexandria Gazette

COMMUNICATED.
"The Octoroon."

The mind of the nineteenth century has lost an attribute. It is incapable of being astonished. Zeno holds the ribbons. We do not apply our thumbs to our ears, we do not imagine that the final trump of Gabriel is to sound its awful blast, when at one o'clock, A. M., our Town clock, disregarding all precedent, strikes thirteen. We are not wonder-struck, that Alexandria should be a small town: yet, she has three Railroads—one, connecting her directly with the Crescent City, one bearing to her commodious storehouses the "bounteous fruits of the Valley," or, on the way to Hampshire, where the "black diamonds" are found; a Canal, with dam No. 5; a grand river, which the prow of the Mt. Vernon majestically ploughs and upon which that monument of Art, the Light House on Jones's point, sheds its effulgent brilliancy. It does not appear strange, that whilst the inhabitants of almost every city and town throughout the United States, are imbibing, and will continue to imbibe during the winter, intellectual draughts voided by distinguished Lecturers, the citizens of Alexandria—each one an Atlas, every nerve in action, every muscle tense, solely intent upon supporting his immense burden—have failed as yet to make a single appointment for a Lecture. It affects us not, to hear the teachers of men decry theatres as schools of immorality, although we derive authority from admired classical sources, as well as from sources with which we are more familiar, and for which we entertain greater respect, for saying that when rightly managed, they are schools of morals.

Brown's emeute, his Napoleonic policy of fighting for an idea, his temporary elevation and his final enjoyments of the blessings of the grave, occasions no surprise. The formation of a Home Guard, with its favorite members—who received Coit's revolvers—and the glorious and brilliant elan with which it "guarded three frightened women, and three curious men from the Mad Boat's wharf to the Southern Depot, does not seem astonishing. The penultimate resolve of the Citizen's Meeting, taken as it does both Southern friends and Northern foes, is not at all odd. Nor, finally, are we in the least ruffled, when we read in the newspapers, that while the call for a public meeting to endorse conservative and Union sentiments in the City of New York, meets with but an atonic and lustless response, the production, at the Winter Garden, a Broadway theatre, of the "Octoroon," a five act play, the effect of which is to traduce, vilify, and misrepresent the South, a gross libel upon Southern society, has created a perfect furore, and has been greeted since the night of its first representation, by morbid, rabid, gaping crowds and by a mercenary, venal, and murderous press, with an "unparalleled enthusiasm."

The writer of this play, Dion Boucicault, is an Englishman, of the Brougham coterie, an author, of the Exeter Hall school; a littérateur, of the Bohemian stamp—his best piece, London Assurance, only mediocre; a theatrical manager, whilom unsuccessful; now crawling from beneath the shadow of his evil star, his depraved taste his venal nature, have formed an alliance for once with Fortune, the winding, crooked, broken line in the palm of his hand—the crease of bad luck—"extending from the Mountain of Mars to the wrist," is becoming straight, the crooks are vanishing, the hiatus are closing—the crease of good luck is there: he has hit the epoch: he has coppered and won on the turn: he ignores sympathy for the slave: he excites antipathy for the master. The "Octoroon" with a few variations is the revivified skeleton of the same old story. The scene is laid upon the Terrebonne plantation in the Delta of the Mississippi. The Landscapes upon the scene boards of the Winter Garden stage, abound in Palm trees, and immense rocks (?). Palm trees and granite rocks are as foreign to Louisiana, as the sentiment of the play is to truth.

McCloskey, the leading male character half owner of the plantation, offers to marry Zoe, the Octoroon, but being rejected, by a series of diabolical plots and actions—among which is his murder of the infant terrible of the play, the boy who took a correct picture of his own death by means of the camera. (?). He manages to bring the estate to hammer, and at the sale buys Zoe for a fabulous sum: at this point his murder of Paul is discovered, he is arrested, he makes his escape, is pursued by Wahnotee, an Indian of the Lepan tribe (?).—the last Indians in that section of country according to the history of Louisiana were the Huma and they were exterminated more than a hundred and fifty years ago, still the events of this play occur in the winter of '59—and killed. Zoe the heroine, is represented as a beautiful, sentimental girl, with whom, not only McCloskey, but George Peyton, his partner, and Salem Scudder their overseer, are in love, and to whom they severally offer their hands in marriage (?). Two rich planters and an overseer offer to marry a negro. Zoe, enamored of Peyton, and dreading death less than the certainty of becoming McCloskey's wife, (?). by the exercise of her woman's cunning, induces Peyton, unknowingly, to prepare for her a poisonous potion, which she drinks, and dies just as the news of McCloskey's death reaches her. Such is the "Octoroon." In a literary point of view, it is a complete fiasco, and its tremendous success as an acting piece, is due only to the infamous sentiment it embodies, which panders to the fanatical bigots of the North. When such plays, such false scenes, such libelous sentiments, are encouraged and encored by audiences which jam a theatre from the orchestra to the third tier, we must go beyond the passing of resolves. When a Massachusetts jury deem the blasted hopes and affections of a husband, the eternal disgrace of pure and lovely children, and a mother's blighted fame, can be cancelled by less paltry money, than a healthy slave would sell for, again we must do something more than pass resolutions The North is corrupt, a vast sphacelus and the indication is to remove it, or we will be poisoned by its noisome virus. GUTTA.