TRANSFORMATION SCENE.

THEATRICAL
AND
CIRCUS LIFE;
OR,
SECRETS OF THE STAGE,
GREEN-ROOM AND SAWDUST ARENA.

EMBRACING

A HISTORY OF THE THEATRE FROM SHAKESPEARE'S TIME TO THE PRESENT DAY, AND
ABOUNDING IN ANECDOTES CONCERNING THE MOST PROMINENT ACTORS
AND ACTRESSES BEFORE THE PUBLIC;ALSO, A COMPLETE EXPOSITION
OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE STAGE, SHOWING THE MANNER IN
WHICH WONDERFUL SCENIC AND OTHER EFFECTS ARE
PRODUCED; THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NEGRO
MINSTRELSY; THE MOST ASTONISHING TRICKS
OF MODERN MAGICIANS, AND A HISTORY
OF THE HIPPODROME, ETC., ETC.

Illustrated with Numerous Engravings and Fine Colored Plates.

By JOHN J. JENNINGS.

CHICAGO:
Globe Publishing Co.
1886.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by
GLOBE PUBLISHING CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PROLOGUE.

The theatre and the circus, both sources of unlimited amusement to the world, are also objects of the greatest interest to all who have had even a single peep at the stage or pressed their feet even once upon the sawdust precincts of the tented show. The tricks and illusions that are mystifying to nine-tenths of those to whom they are presented rarely fail to be productive of pleasure, and the performers, whether before the foot-lights or within the circus ring, generally succeed in so thoroughly winning the hearts of the public, that, though their faces, when the paint is off and the atmosphere of glory has departed, might not be recognized upon the street, their names are so fixedly identified with the pleasant moments associated with their art, that they become household words, and are spoken, with admiration and praise, by all classes, from the newsboy and bootblack up through the various strata of society even to the ruler of the nation.

In presenting this volume to the public the intention has been to bring the player and the people into closer relations, and by revealing the secrets of the stage and sawdust arena to show that what appears at first to be deep mystery and to many, who are bigoted and averse to theatrical and kindred entertainments, the blackest diabolism, is merely the result of the simplest combinations of mechanical skill and studied art, and is as innocent of the sinister character bestowed upon it as are the efforts of school children at their annual exhibitions or the exercises of a Sabbath School class before a row of drowsy and nodding church-deacons. Fault may be found with the private lives of numbers of the members of the theatrical and circus profession, but the sins and shortcomings of individuals, can be visited upon the entire class with no more justice than can the frailties of a few preachers be applied generally to the pulpit, or the dishonesty of a handful of lawyers be reflected upon all the disciples of Blackstone in existence. Neither is it just to class as theatres places of resort that do not deserve the name—the "dives" and "dens" that are frequented by disreputable men and women whose low tastes are catered to by men and women every bit as disreputable as their patrons. Such establishments receive, in this volume, only the severe treatment they fully merit.

In explaining the mysteries of stage representations, and indicating the tricks of ring performances, as well as in speaking of the private lives of performers and giving biographies of the most noted actors and actresses now before the public, an attempt has been made to be perfectly accurate in every detail. The anecdotal portion of the book has likewise received careful attention, and indeed every feature of the work has been given due consideration, in the hope that in and out of the profession, Theatrical And Circus Life may meet with a favorable reception and be regarded as worthy the subjects of which it treats. Commending it to the kindness of all into whose hands it falls; and assuring the inhabitants of the mimic and real worlds, that, whatever construction may be placed upon his sentences, naught but respect and affection is felt for the true and good men and women of the stage, the author parts from his volume regretting that it is not large enough to give everybody a place in its pages, or to say as much about each individual as each deserves.

J. J. J.

St. Louis, August 1, 1882.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

STAGE OF A MODERN THEATRE.

CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY PEEP.

Anybody can get into the auditorium of a theatre by paying an admission fee reaching from twenty-five cents up to $1.50, and the sawdust precincts of the circus may be penetrated for the modest sum of fifty cents; but behind the curtain of the theatre and beyond the screened door through which circus attractions enter the exhibition arena, are sacred places, with secrets that are so valuable to their owners that they dare not for less than a small fortune allow the public to view or even to understand them. A general knowledge of the simplicity of theatrical and circus tricks—of the delusions that make up the stock in trade of showmen generally—would destroy their value as salable articles, and make everybody a little Barnum or Jack Haverly of his own, with ability to furnish himself with amusement at home, while the former mastodonic managers could only look on and weep at the educational facilities with which the country was overrun, and mourn the Shakespearian days when people were easily pleased with the poverty-ridden stage and bare representations that were offered them. But there is no fear that the public will ever be instructed up to such a high degree in regard to the inside workings of the theatre and circus, that there will not at all times be plenty of patrons for both these excellent forms of entertainment. The managers take good care to keep their secrets to themselves, as those who go prying around the shrines in which the theatric arcana are held, very soon find out. At the back door of every theatre—the entrance to the stage—is a cerberus of the most pronounced kind, who would sooner bite his own grandfather's ear off than allow anybody not entitled to the privilege, to pass him; while at the door of the circus dressing-room and all around it are faithful sentinels who will listen to no password, and through whose ranks it is as impossible to break as it is for the fat boy in the side show to throw a double somersault over seventeen horses, with an elephant as big as Jumbo at the far end of the line. It will, however, be the proud privilege of the readers of this book to get as close to the secrets of the stage and sawdust arena as one can well do without knowing absolutely all about them, and by the time the last page is read and the volume is ready to be closed, I think the readers will be both delighted and astonished with the revelations that have been made.

Turn the average man loose on the stage of a theatre at night, while a play is going on, and it is a Russian kobol against a whole San Juan mining district that he will not know whether he has struck the seventh circle of heaven or is in a lunatic asylum. He will meet some very queer creatures in the scenes; he will see many strange things; the brilliant lights around him, the patches of color flashing into his eyes, the sea of faces and the tangle of millinery in the auditorium, will mystify him; the startling streaks of black upon the faces of the men and women who jostle him as he closely hugs the wings, their red noses and blooming cheeks, the general tomato-can aspect of their faces, the shaggy wigs and straggling beards that look as if they had been torn off the back of a goat only ten minutes before; the dismal, commonplace clothes that shine so radiantly when seen from a chair in the parquette or dress circle,—all these things will set his poor brain in a whirl; and while he is looking on awe-stricken, the scene shifters will come rushing down upon him with a new delusion, trampling on his toes in a manner that suggests in a most potential way his superfluity in that particular place, and pushing him aside without the merest apology, and perhaps with no other remark than a fragment of fervent profanity, as if he were a wretched street Arab in that mimic world in which the scene shifter and the captain of the "supers" play such very important parts. People come out of every imaginable place all around him. There seem to be doors everywhere,—in the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and even in space; and as the "vasty deep" and the rest of the surroundings give up their dwellers, the intruder receives fresh jolts and thrusts, and possibly additional donations of profanity. This, of course, applies only to the male apparitions that overwhelm the strange visitor to the new world behind the scenes. The female portion of that illusory sphere have nothing to say to him except with their eyes, which very forcibly inquire the meaning of his presence there.

LOTTA.

If a person would like to understand how awfully strange and lonely it will be for the last individual left alive upon earth, he need only pay a first visit to the stage of a theatre where he is not acquainted with any of the actors or actresses, and has not even the pleasure of knowing one of the minor attaches. Any attempt to form an acquaintance is promptly and unmistakably repelled, and all the poor unfortunate has to do is to move up where he is out of everybody's way, and he can look on and wonder to his heart's content. As he inspects his surroundings and has his attention called to the actions of the people whose business it is to place the stage in shape for an act or scene of a play, he will readily comprehend the meaning of forming a world out of chaos. If they are getting ready the balcony scene for "Romeo and Juliet," wing pieces are pushed out to represent trees and the side of the house of the Capulets—and what a house it usually is, too, for such elegant people! The front of the house is rapidly placed in position between two wings, the balcony is quickly nailed on, and with the aid of a rude scaffolding behind the scene and a ladder, the fair Juliet mounts, and, feeling her way carefully, at last steps out upon the frail structure to tell the sweet moon her love for Romeo. The whole thing looks ridiculous. Even the stately daughter of the Capulets has not beauty or skill enough to remove the absurdity from the scene which has the appearance of being, and is in reality nothing else than wood and canvas freely splashed with paint of the proper colors. A painted box represents a stone; a green carpet passes for grass; the beautiful bric-a-brac that opens the eyes of the æsthetic people in the audience is only brown paper hurriedly daubed by the scene painter's apprentice; the wall of the Capulets' garden is a very frail canvas concern, and the floral attributes are frauds of the deepest dye from the scenic artist's long table of colors. The whole picture is simple, but unintelligible to the looker-on for the first time, and as he vanishes through the door he laughs heartily at the very thin disguise tragedy and comedy are required to put on to delude and please the public.

Let him return to the theatre in the morning and view its mysteries shorn of the dazzle and splendor that the night brings. He will be more astonished still. The place is usually as dark as a dungeon, there being something peculiar in the construction of theatres which makes them bright at night and dismal during daylight. If a stray slant of light falls anywhere upon the stage it will be rudely mocked by the bits of burning candle by the aid of which the stage carpenter is at work right in the very spot where, twelve hours before, Romeo and Juliet lived and died for each other in such a lamentably pathetic way that the audience shed tears, and only gave the lachrymal rainstorm a rest at intervals long enough to shower the star with applause. The stage carpenter's assistant is there too, the machinist, the scene painters, the men who have charge of the company's baggage, the property-man, and others. They fill the scene in a lugubrious and wholly uninteresting way,—all are at work, and as heedless of the attendance of strangers as the actors and stage hands of the night before had been. The scenes have lost their color—such as are left, and this mimic world that had its admiring and aspiring hundreds is as bare and desert-like as a bald head after its owner has been using hair restoratives for about six months. It has neither shape nor any suggestion of its whilom beauty and attractiveness. The green-room may be explored, and the dressing-rooms, but they will reveal nothing; their former occupants are probably still abed, and unless there is to be a rehearsal they will not be seen around again until 7 o'clock at night. He must not be too searching in his explorations or the attention of the attaches will be attracted, and the conversation that will follow may not be the most pleasant in the world to him. Moving down the stairs that lead to the space under the stage, the explorer will find it darker and more dungeon-like still, and even if it were light nothing could be seen but the steam boiler, for heating and power purposes, the ventilating apparatus, the numerous trap-door openings and the posts about them, with a few other accessories that are hardly worth mentioning. Again he will be forced to confess that everything is very simple, but he cannot understand any part of it, and again he goes away with a laugh on his lips and merriment in his heart because the people are so easily pleased, and theatrical managers find it so easy to entertain them.

A visit to the dressing-tent of the circus will be equally barren of appreciable results. He can see the dazzling costumes, the shapely limbs of the females, the gaily-caparisoned steeds, the red gold-laced coats of the supers, and a chaotic heaping up of a number of indescribable articles, but behind the canvas screen that divides the tent lie secrets that he must not attempt to penetrate, for there are the lives, the lies and the fascinations of the performers. There, awkward limbs receive their roundly shaping, and old age, by a magic touch with the elixir of the "make-up" box, puts on the masquerading bloom of youth. The same might, to some extent, be said of the dressing-rooms of the theatre, only the application could not be as wide or general as in the circus profession, for the lives these people lead soon lay waste their beauty if they happen to be young, and crowd senility upon them long before the usual time. Their work is always hard, their surroundings are of the very worst kind, they grow up in an atmosphere of fraud, and they necessarily learn early the arts of deception whereby their employers make fame and fortune. But I have taken a stranger into the dressing-tent, and I must not abuse the hospitality of the place by exposing its sins in his presence. The stranger is introduced all around, shakes hands with everybody, even the premiere equestrienne, or, perhaps, the charming and daring little lady who is twice daily shot out of a cannon, and besides makes two headlong dives a day from the dome of the tent into the net spread beneath. All are glad to see him, and he is surprised to find that the two Indians who juggle fire-brands and do other feats not at all consistent with the traditions of the aborigines, have not sufficient savage blood in their veins to make respectable cigar store signs, but are base counterfeits of the noble red man, applications of chocolate and vermilion to their faces, and the usual accompaniment of black hair, feathers, and deerskin clothing having bestowed upon them all the air of the child of the forest that they possessed. As the band sounds the music for the riding act the equestrienne's horse dashes tamely into the ring, and the gentlemanly agent of the show pushes the visitor out to have him "look at an act that beats anything of the kind in the world."

As in the material or mechanical features of the show there are mysteries of the most interesting and instructive kind, so, too, the personal features of the realm of entertainment—the great world of amusement—contain much that will not only surprise, but will tickle the unsophisticated. By lifting the veil the least bit, the reader can have a peep at the most attractive of the events and incidents that go to make the romantic career of an actor or actress. There are various little things that look simple and innocent enough when they appear in the shape of a newspaper paragraph that contain a world of meaning to the initiated. There are methods of getting and keeping players before the public of which the latter know no more than they do of the wife of the man in the moon. There are flagrant scandals mingling with the innocent revels of these masquerading people, and there are, too, some of the saintliest, sweetest, manliest and womanliest of individuals in a profession that almost the entire world looks upon with the wildest suspicion, and whose bright names and fair fames can never be tarnished by the iniquitous doings of persons lower and less respectable in character. In all that will be written here regarding the dark side of theatrical life, I wish it distinctly understood that there is no desire or intention to cast even the slightest reflection upon the honored and respected members of a grand profession, and wherever a seemingly sweeping and uncomplimentary statement may be made, the reader will be kind enough to add a saving clause in favor of all those who do not deserve such condemnation. In the concert saloon, the variety den, the boys' theatre, and the numerous other dives in which vice parades boldly and nakedly, will be found ample field for trenchant and graphic writing. These pits of infamy flourish everywhere, and are as freely patronized as the charms of their female attractions are freely displayed; the girls in short dresses, in gleaming tights, with padded bust and cotton-rounded limbs, their seductive wiles, their beer-thirstiness, their reckless familiarity with male friends and strangers, alike from the beardless boy of fourteen to the bald and withering roué, the ample freedom with which they throw themselves into the arms of victims and give themselves up to the most outrageous revels; the female minstrel gang and the break-o'-day girls, who supplement their sins on the stage with subsequent and even more surprising iniquity in the hop or dance that follows the show,—all these phases of the lower strata of theatrical life, as being more productive of interesting secrets of a so-called stage, must be touched upon, that the reader may be able to contrast the extremes of the amusement world, and understand that in mimic as well as real life, there are abject misery and squalid sinfulness while, above all, shines the grand and stainless character of the noble and pure-minded people who bring genius and virtue to the profession of which they are bright, shining ornaments.

CHAPTER II.
A THEATRE OF SHAKESPEARE'S DAY.

If some of the old Greek dramatists could shake together their ashes and assume life, they would open their ancient eyes to look upon the beauty, comfort, and charming symmetry of the first-class theatre of the present day. The ancients were at first obliged to put up with representations given upon rude carts; afterwards stone theatres were constructed, with the performers placed in a pit in the middle space, but no such effort at decoration, or to provide for the convenience of spectators, was to be seen as is to be found everywhere now. The plays, too, while they may have been delightful to our Hellenic predecessors, would hardly draw a corporal's guard at the present time, when spectacular melodrama is all the rage, and the only chorus the average theatre-goer cares to see is the aggregation of pretty girls in entrancing tights, and with the utmost scantiness of clothes to hide their personal charms, who sing the concerted music in comic opera. This is the kind of chorus that sends a thrill of ecstacy through the heart, and around the resplendent dome of thought of the much-maligned modern bald-head. The strophe and anti-strophe of the ancient drama would set the nineteenth century citizen crazy as a wild man of Borneo. The ancient drama was gradually replaced by the ecclesiastical drama,—the mystery or miracle play,—an example of which remains to us in the celebrated "Passion Play," performed at Obarammergan at stated intervals, and over the projected production of which, in this country, there was so much trouble that the play was never produced. In this style of drama, events in the life of the Savior, or the great mysteries of the church, were the topics dealt with by the saintly playwright, and the actors personated characters ranging from the Devil up through the various grades of saintliness and angelic beatification to God Almighty himself. The miracle play flourished during the middle ages, and survived down almost to the Elizabethan period, when Shakespeare appeared upon the scene; and with his advent there came a revolution, the outgrowth of which is the present perfect and beautiful theatre. The change in the style of plays brought a change in the style of places for their representations, and while the Bard of Avon was making his reputation in the dramatic line, the Globe and Blackfriars were leading the way to advancement in the matter of theatrical structures. They had performances on Sunday in those olden times, and while good Christians were worshipping God in their sanctuaries, the undevout Britons of the "golden age" were worshipping Thespis in his.

Let us drop back into a theatre of the Shakespearian epoch, some Sunday afternoon when the weather is fine, and you will not be compelled to stand bare-headed in the pit. Let us go to the Globe. It was situated on the Bankside. It was a wooden building, of hexagonal shape, open to the sky, and partly thatched. To a little tower-like projection from the roof was fastened a staff of no inconsiderable height, from which always fluttered the flag of England. Windows were sparsely distributed here and there, on each side of the building, while over the door was displayed the figure of Hercules bearing the globe upon his brawny shoulders. Whether the mythological giant came with his terrestrial burden to dedicate, in propria persona, this temple to the mightiest of the muses, or whether the whole thing was only a cunning contrivance of some skilful artisan, embodying the conception of a clever play writer, history does not record.

Whenever a play was to be enacted, the entrance to the Globe was always jammed with footboys, eager for a chance to hold a gentleman's horse, or lounging gallants, who collected to show themselves and to ogle the ladies as they entered. It was a lively spectacle, as stiff dames and ruffled noblemen, poor artisans and sleek gallants, wits and critics, footmen and laborers and ragged urchins stepped forward to pay the admittance fee of a shilling or a sixpence, or to make a respectful offer of their credit, which was usually most disrespectfully condemned as unlawful tender. It was a lively sight as gouty old gentlemen flourished huge batons over the scraggy heads of malicious boys who jostled them purposely; as titled old dames in immense flaring petticoats endeavored to smooth their noble wrinkles, and look mincing and modest under the impertinent gaze of the bedizened fops, and as the fops themselves twisted and bent and bowed and shook their powdered wigs, twirled their glove-fingers, or turned out their toes fastidiously, at the imminent risk of dislocating their tarsals.

But let us enter with the crowd and observe the internal economy of the theatre, and the character of the performance. Though externally hexagonal, the building within is circular in form. There is no roof, as before intimated, and the exhibitions occurring only in the summer and in pleasant weather, the air is always serene and pure, and the audience requires no protection from storms or wind. In the centre of the enclosure is the pit, as in modern play-houses. Here, "the understanding gentlemen of the ground," as Ben Jonson has it, revelled in the delights of the drama at sixpence a head; the bosom of the earth their sole footstool, and the blue canopy of heaven their only shelter. The "great unwashed did congregate" upon this spot, sometimes in immense numbers, to luxuriate at once in Shakespeare and tobacco; for be it known, the ancient theatres of London were to the working classes very much what its modern porter and beer shops are. They were places of resort where tradesmen and tradesmen's wives assembled to gossip and smoke and steep.

Surrounding the pit upon all sides except where the stage completed the circle, were the boxes or rooms, as they were called. In these were assembled those who could lay claim to rank or wealth. They were furnished with wooden benches—a luxury of which the pit could never boast, and which was purchased for a shilling. It will be observed, from what has been said, that the internal arrangements of the ancient theatres were upon precisely the same plan as those of the modern. The cause of this identity of structure may be easily traced. As late as the reign of Henry VIII., it was customary to enact plays and pageants in the courts of inns. These were usually quadrangular in form, with balconies or piazzas projecting into the court, and corresponding with the stories of the building. The stage was erected near the entrance-gate, and occupied one entire side of the quadrangle. The inn-yard thus formed the pit or parquette, for the accommodation of the "understanding gentlemen," while the balconies or rooms (rising above each other in tiers varying with the number of stories) corresponded to the boxes. It was from this crude, original conception that the architects of Queen Elizabeth's reign fashioned the Globe and Blackfriars, and from thence has it come down to the present day.

Directly in front of the pit was the stage, protected by a woollen curtain. Unlike modern "drops," it was divided in the middle, and suspended by rings from an iron rod. When the performance was about to commence it was drawn aside—opening from the middle; the rolling up process is an achievement of some later mind.

Hark! Do you hear the gentle grating, the jingling, the rustling of woollen? Without the slightest premonitory symptoms there has been a rupture of the curtain, and the mysteries it so securely hid are most unexpectedly revealed. Seated upon wooden stools or reclining upon the rushes with which the stage is strewn, are a number of individuals composedly smoking long pipes, whom the unsophisticated might take for actors. Far from it; they are the perpetual bane of actors—wits and gallants, who delight in nothing so much as in exhibiting themselves for the public to admire, or confusing the actors by their pleasantries and disturbing the progress of the play.

Protruding from the further wall of the stage is a balcony, supported on wooden pillars, and flanked by a pair of boxes in which those who rejoiced in being singular or who could not afford the full price of admission were accommodated. The balcony was used by the actors. It served as the rostrum when a large company was to be addressed; it was the throne of kings and princes, the grand judgment-seat of mighty umpires, and in cases of necessity was convenient as the first-story window of an imaginary dwelling-house. For this latter purpose it was particularly useful in the garden scene between Romeo and Juliet. But while we have been delaying in description, the rushes upon the boards have rustled, the actors have made their appearance, and the business of the play has commenced.

For the purpose of illustrating the manner in which performances were conducted, we select the "As You Like It," of Shakespeare, as being most familiar to the general reader, and also peculiarly adapted to our purpose. Orlando and Adam make their appearance, and a signboard nailed to one of the side entrance communicates the altogether unsuspected fact that we are gazing upon an orchard. We see nothing which in any way favors the agreeable illusion: there are the rushes, the smoking fops, the balcony and a maze of pine boards, but nothing that looks like trees. Still, let not these things move you to that degree of uncharitableness or presumption that you doubt whether there be an orchard; does not the infallible board with its painted letters positively affirm, "This be an orchard?" Other dramatis personæ soon enter, and the hypothetical orchard becomes the scene of a most animated and interesting colloquy—the assembled company receiving no intimation that the fruit trees are no more, until the curtain falls, or rather is drawn, upon the first act.

When the woolen hangings are again separated, the imagination is no longer painfully strained to support the illusion of the apples, but the unerring board directs the wandering eye to the vast forests of Arden. Here Jaques makes his sublime forest meditations in an area of ten feet by twelve, enclosed in rough pine boards; his enthusiasm, considerably damped by the provoking witticisms of critics and gallants, and his utterances choked by the volumes of tobacco smoke which roll in lazy, suffocating clouds toward the ceiling from a score of pipes. The affectionate ditties of Orlando are nailed to visionary trees, and he makes passionate love to the fair Rosalind amid fumes which strangle tender phrases, and convert sighings into pulmonary symptoms of a different character.

It should here be observed by way of explanation, that Rosalind, when personated in Elizabeth's time, was fair only by courtesy; for female parts were enacted during her reign, and indeed, during many subsequent reigns, by boys or young men. There is an anecdote related of Charles II., which is a matter of history, and illustrates this point very well. It is said that on one occasion, visiting the theatre at the bringing out of a new play, by some great author, he became impatient at the unusual delay in drawing asunder the curtain. The royal wrath soon became extreme, and it was essential to the prospects of the "management" that it should be appeased. Accordingly, when the vials of imperial indignation were about to be emptied promiscuously upon the assembly, when the storm was just about to burst, a messenger from the green-room informed his majesty that the fair heroine had not finished shaving,—and the tempest immediately subsided. At each successive act new boards with fresh inscriptions inform us of the situation of the performers. The saloons of the duke's palace and the cottage of the peasant—scenes in doors and scenes out of doors—are precisely the same, with the exception of the invariable and ever-changing signboard.

But there is one novelty, one new feature in the representation as the play progresses. It will be recollected that the balcony was mentioned as furnishing a throne for princes, and a judgment-seat for dispensers of justice. During the wrestling contest between Charles and Orlando, this most serviceable commodity comes into requisition. Here sits the "duke" as umpire of the combat and general of the troops and retainers who stand on guard below. It is quite refreshing to hear his stentorian voice issuing from so unusual a quarter—it furnishes quite an agreeable relief to the tedious monotony of insipid dialogue going on among the rushes below.

The play, however, proceeds rather sluggishly from the utter meagreness and insufficiency of the "scenery, machinery and decorations," so indispensable to the attractiveness of theatrical exhibitions. The tradesmen in the pit turn their backs to the stage and their eyes to the skies, as they clasp affectionately the almost exhausted flagon, and pour into their thirsty throats the residue of half a dozen potations. The crimpled dames in the boxes relax their majestic stiffness, and relapse somnolent into the arms of the gouty old gentlemen, their husbands. The wits and "clever" men upon the stage grow more boisterous in their pleasantries, and fumigate more zealously as they pelt the unfortunate actors with rushes, or trip them as they "exeunt." To the vulgar crowd the only attractions which the performance offers, are the brilliant dresses of the actors and the vestige of a plot which the personation enables them to glean. As a general thing, however, the stage now receives hardly any attention. Pipes, tankards, and gossip are the order of the day, and everybody is glad when Orlando succeeds in obtaining his hereditary rights, wins the hand of the beautiful Rosalind, is dismissed in happiness, and the woolen screen slips along its iron rod for the last time.

Such was the style of dramatic exhibitions in the Elizabethan era. The stage was totally devoid of all scenic appendages calculated to produce the illusion necessary to add interest and intelligence to the plot. Rocks and trees, palaces and hamlets, places of festivity and scenes of shipwreck, all existed merely in the imagination, with neither properties nor scenery to aid in the deception.

INTERIOR OF A MODERN THEATRE.

CHAPTER III.
THE AMERICAN THEATRE.

Good-natured, rosy-cheeked, cheerful little Davy Garrick, as Dr. Johnson called the tragedian, was in the zenith of his glory at the Drury Lane, London, about the middle of the last century, and Goodman's Fields, which had cradled the wonderful actor, was in its decline. It declined so rapidly after Garrick deserted it that its manager, Wm. Hallam, failed in 1750, and the theatre was closed. Hallam at once turned his thoughts toward America as a field in which his fortune might be replenished,—English actors and managers still look upon this country as an El Dorado,—and so he consulted with his brother Lewis Hallam, a comedian, and the two came to the conclusion to organize a company and run the risk of being scalped by what they considered the liberal but bloodthirsty tomahawk-wielding citizens of the New World. They got a company together, twenty-four stock plays, many of them Shakespearian, were selected, with eight farces and a single pantomime, "The Harlequin Collector, or The Miller Deceived." Wm. Hallam and his brother were to share the profits of the venture, and the former was to remain at home while the latter managed the company and threw in his services as first low comedian, his wife and children also taking parts in the performances.

Under the direction of Lewis the company, with some scenery, costumes, and all the usual stage accessories, set sail on board the Charming Sally in 1752. During the voyage when the weather permitted, the company rehearsed their plays on the quarter-deck of the vessel, having the crew and officers for their audience, and receiving from them many manifestations of the delight which their histrionic efforts brought to the Jack Tars' hearts. They landed at Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia, and the manager after a diligent search found a store-house on the outskirts of the town, which he thought would suit his purpose. This he leased and metamorphosed into a theatre with pit, gallery, and boxes, and having the establishment ready on September 5, 1752, on that day the first performance ever given in America by a regular company of comedians, was given to a presumably large and delighted audience. As was the custom in those days, the bill was a double one, consisting of "The Merchant of Venice" and the farce "Lethe." The cast for "The Merchant of Venice" was as follows: Bassanio, Mr. Rigby; Antonio, Mr. Clarkson; Gratiano, Mr. Singleton; Salanio and Duke, Mr. Herbert; Salarino and Gobbs, Mr. Wignel; Launcelot and Tubal, Mr. Hallam; Shylock, Mr. Malone; Servant to Portia, Master Lewis Hallam (being his first appearance on any stage); Nerissa, Miss Palmer; Jesica (her first appearance on any stage), Miss Hallam; Portia, Mrs. Hallam. The cast for "Lethe" was as follows (the Tailor having been cut out, and the part of Lord Chalkston not having been written into the farce at the time the Hallam company left England): Esop, Mr. Clarkson; Old Man, Mr. Malone; Fine Gentleman, Mr. Singleton; Frenchman, Mr. Rigby; Charon, Mr. Herbert; Mercury, Mr. Adcock; Drunken Man and Tattoo, Mr. Hallam; John, Mr. Wignel; Mrs. Tattoo, Miss Palmer; Fine Lady, Mrs. Hallam.

The Williamsburg theatre was a very rude structure, and so near the woods that the manager could, as he often did, stand in the back door of the building and shoot pigeons for his dinner. Still the company remained here for a long time and met with much success. The house was finally destroyed by fire and the company removed to Annapolis, where a substantial building was converted to their use and where they remained with fortune favoring them until they got ready to go to New York. This they did in 1753, opening a theatre in the metropolis on September 17th, that on Nassau Street, in a building afterwards occupied by the old Dutch Church. The bill for the first night was "The Conscious Lovers" and the ballad-farce "Damon and Phillida." But three performances were given each week—on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—and this continued to be the rule up to the beginning of the present century. The price of admission was eight shillings to the boxes, six shillings to the pit and three shillings to the gallery. This was on the first night, but the second night the prices were lowered to six shillings, five shillings, and three shillings for boxes, pit, and gallery respectively, and by the middle of October a fourth reduction was made, so that admission to the pit could be had for four shillings and to the gallery for two shillings. The performance began at six o'clock, and on the bill for the opening night appears a request that ladies and gentlemen will come to the theatre in time, and a statement that nothing under the full price will be taken during the entire performance. This seems to be a departure from the custom of the mother country, where half price was received for admission after the third act. The Nassau Street theatre was closed on the evening of March 18, 1754, with "The Beggars' Opera" and "The Devil to Pay."

While the company was still in New York, Manager Hallam was endeavoring to come to terms with the Quakers of Philadelphia, who strenuously objected to having players in their midst, or to allowing stage representations in their city. Mr. Malone, a member of the company, was at length sent on to the Quaker City, as Hallam's ambassador, and after considerable trouble succeeded in obtaining Gov. Hamilton's permission to present twenty-four plays and their attendant farces provided there was nothing indecent or immoral in them. In April, 1754 the company gave its first performance in Philadelphia, playing the tragedy of "The Fair Penitent," and the farce, "Miss in Her Teens." The building occupied by the actors is designated by William Dunlap, the historian of the early American theatre, as "the store-house of a Mr. Plumstead," and was situated "on the corner of the first alley above Pine Street." After the twenty-four performances had been given by "authority of his excellency," Gov. Hamilton, the players were allowed to add six more nights, after which they returned to New York. Here they erected a theatre on Cruger's wharf, between Old Slip and Coffee House Slip, and prospered.

Boston did not have a theatre until 1792, and then got its first place of amusement only because Wignell and three other members of Hallam's company, for some reason or other, seceded from it. The seceders brought to their standard some money men of the Hub, a building was erected, and on August 10, 1792, the first show was given; feats on the tight rope and acrobatic and other artists contributing to the entertainment. Five years later New York had two theatres, one on the Johns, and the other on Greenwich Street, and when the nineteenth century began, amusements were in a flourishing condition in all the large cities of the country, and the theatre had taken firm root and gave full promise of its present prosperity in the New World.

They were a queer band, these early strollers on American soil. It reads like a romance to follow them through the history of their early struggles, and to scrutinize the personal peculiarities of the individuals who composed the company. One of them—I forget which at the present moment—was an imaginative fellow given up to all sorts of schemes and inventions, and published far and wide the announcement that he had discovered a process of manufacturing salt from sea water. A member of one of the earliest orchestras—a short time after Hallam had ceased furnishing music to his audience with "one Mr. Pelham and his harpsichord" or the single fiddle of a Mr. Hewlett—had been a Catholic priest in Switzerland, and had suffered the tortures of the Inquisition. He told his story to his manager one day and it was really touching. His mother, he said, had dedicated him in his infancy to the priesthood. When he became old enough he was placed in a theological seminary, instructed and duly ordained. He was a priest when Spain went to war against France. His canton raised a regiment, and the priest being made its chaplain accompanied it to Madrid. In Madrid he for the first time learned to love. He met in the street a handsome Spanish lady who won his heart and lit the fire of passion in his frame. He became acquainted with her, and ascertained that the lady reciprocated his affection. There were many moments of stolen pleasure, many sighs and vows, until they finally agreed to flee together to America. The day and hour were agreed upon, and the lovers were in readiness, when a strong hand was laid upon the recreant priest's shoulder and he was thrown into prison. He realized his awful position at once, knowing that he was in the power of that monster, the Inquisition. For weeks he remained chained to the floor of his cell. Once he was led out to execution, but by some miracle or accident, was saved. At last, having suffered severely, he was put to the torture, and weak, dying, and distracted was led to the gate of his prison, thrust out into the street, and warned as he valued his life to leave Madrid within ten days. It is needless to say he did so, and never learned or saw anything more of his Spanish sweetheart.

From the rude and uncomfortable theatre of a century ago, with dressing-rooms under the stage, and but a single fiddle or harpsichord player for the orchestra, with poorly lighted and illy ventilated auditoriums, with meagre scenery and ragged wardrobes—from the primitive theatre of the New World has grown the magnificent, symmetrical, and elegantly appointed houses of amusement of the present day—structures beautifully and chastely ornamented in their exteriors, while their interiors have received the most delicate touches of the artist's brush and the most careful attention from the upholsterer—beautiful in color and drapery, rich in furniture, and the very perfection of architectural design. Our stages are revelations of dramatic completeness, sometimes presenting scenic pictures that challenge nature itself in their attractiveness, and at all times surrounding the actors of a play with accessories gorgeous and extensive enough to mystify as well as delight nine out of every ten patrons of the theatre. The manner in which these extraordinary and pleasing illusions are produced is one of the great secrets of the stage, and when the mechanism employed is explained the reader will be surprised to learn how simple and almost undisguised are the methods whereby the people behind the scenes work and multiply wonders.

CHAPTER IV.
AT THE STAGE-DOOR.

The patrons of the theatre must all find their way into the house through the front doors; only the privileged few are allowed access to the mysteries and wonders of the stage through the back door. Here stands a gentleman, generally of repulsive mien and unattractive manners, whose special business it is to see that nobody, not entitled to do so, penetrates the sacred precincts, and who learns at once to distinguish between the people who come prying around his bailiwick merely for curiosity, and those who are there to "mash" a susceptible ballet girl or perhaps an indiscreet member of the company. Those who are led to the stage-door by curiosity are numerous and they are all promptly repulsed; and the "mashers" who stand at the stage-door after the performance is over, must get into the good graces of the door-keeper, and retain his friendship if they desire the course of true love to run smoother than the old adage says it runs.

In the large theatres of Eastern cities the cerberus who guards the stage entrance generally has a little sentry box just inside the door, with a window cut in it, a stove placed inside in cold weather, a number of pigeon-holes for letters, and indeed all modern conveniences, as the saying goes. Here he sits and smokes, hailing everybody who passes in and saying a kind or snarling word to all who pass out. If the mail has brought a letter for any member of the company, or a "masher" has sent one of the girls a dainty little note expressive of the sentiment that is swelling in his twenty-six-inch bosom, the cerberus will have it, and will hand it out to the person for whom it is intended with an appropriate and not always complimentary remark about it. Sometimes this guardian of the theatric arcana will take advantage of his position to tyrranize over the ballet girls and other subordinates of a company, and will rule in his autocratic way to his own pecuniary and other profit. In the East he is made a kind of time-keeper, notes when the performers appear for duty and when they are absent, besides otherwise making himself serviceable to the management and careful of the interests of his house.

A story is told about one of them—I think his name was Bulkhead—who was employed at a theatre where the ballet was large, and the girls paid very liberal tribute to him. They gave him silk handkerchiefs of the prettiest and most expensive kind to wipe his fantastic mug on; they paid for innumerable hot drinks with which he rounded out the waist of his pantaloons; they dropped cigars into his always outstretched paw, and otherwise drained their own resources to make Mr. Bulkhead as happy and comfortable as possible. He, at first, took whatever was offered, but soon grew bold, and demanded fifty cents each of their little five dollars a week, every salary day. The girls made up their minds not to accede to this demand, which they deemed unjust and exorbitant; they not only positively refused to give Bulkhead any money, but would give him nothing else, not even a two-cent cigar. As a result, about one-half of the girls forfeited a portion of their salaries next pay-day. This aroused all the fury there was in the entire ballet, and when they found out, too, that Bulkhead had driven away their male admirers they were as wild as so many hyenas. It did not take long for them to hit upon a means of wreaking vengeance upon the heartless and unscrupulous door-keeper. They clubbed together what change they had and got Bulkhead boiling drunk; by the time the show was over on that (to him) memorable night he did not know which way to look for Sunday. After the final curtain had fallen and the lights were dimmed, Bulkhead sat at the door on his stool swaying like an unsteady church-steeple and snoring like an engine when its boiler is nearly empty. The girls picked him up and carried him into a remote corner of the stage, where they piled a lot of old scenery around him after tying his hands and feet securely. Then they got red and blue fire ready, almost under his cherry red and panting nose; one of the girls took her position at the thunder drum; another had hold of the rain wheel; another was at the wind machine; a fourth got a big brass horn out of the music room and a fifth got the bass drum; the remainder stood ready to lend assistance with their hands and throats. At a given signal the thunder rolled loudly, the wind whistled vigorously, the rain came down in torrents, the brass horn moaned piteously, the bass drum was beaten unmercifully, and pans of burning blue and red fire were poked through crevices in the piled-up machinery right under the drunken door-keeper's nostrils, while all the girls shouted at the tops of their voices and clapped as enthusiastically as if they were applauding a favorite. Bulkhead after opening his eyes and having his ears assailed by the din, shouted wildly for assistance and mercy and all kinds of things; but he got neither assistance nor mercy. The racket continued for nearly ten minutes when quiet and darkness were restored, and the girls quietly stole away leaving Bulkhead alone in his agony under the pile of scenery, where he was found by the stage carpenter next morning, a first-class, double-barrelled case of jim-jams. He is now in an insane asylum, and employs most of his time telling people that notwithstanding all Bob Ingersoll's buncombe and blarney there must be a hereafter, for he has himself been through the sunstroke section of it.

DECORATING A SCENE PAINTER.

The ballet girls of another theatre played an equally effective and amusing trick upon an obnoxious scene painter. The artist had been in the habit of painting posts, doorsteps, etc., in the neighborhood of the stage-door in colors that were not readily perceptible, and when the young ladies' "mashes" came around after the performance to wait for them to dress, they innocently sat down upon or leaned against the fresh paint and ruined their clothes. The scene painter and his friend were always in the neighborhood to raise a laugh when the disaster was made known, and the result was that the gay young men would come near the stage-door no more, and that the sweetly susceptible creature known as the ballet girl was obliged to go home alone, supperless. Well, one day the girls found the artist asleep against his paint-table with a half emptied pitcher of beer by his side. This was their opportunity. One of the girls who was of a decorative Oscar-Wilde-like turn of mind got a small brush while another held the colors, and in ten minutes they had that man's face painted so that he would pass for a whole stock of scenery; the tattooed Greek was a mere five-cent chromo alongside of him, and a Sioux Indian with forty pounds of war-paint on would be a ten-cent side-show beside a twelve-monster-shows-in-one-under-a-single-canvas exhibition. In this elaborate but undecorative condition the scene painter wandered off to a neighboring saloon, the wonder and merriment of all who saw him. He did not understand the cause of the general stare and unusual laugh at him, until a too sensitive friend took him to a mirror and showed him his frescoed features. Profanity and gnashing of teeth followed, and the artist was prevented from going back to the theatre to murder ten or twelve people only by a thoughtful policeman who picked him up as he flew out through the door of the saloon, and carried him off to the calaboose. He was sorry when he got sober, and from that day to this has not attempted to paint the coat-tails of the ballet girls' lovers.

A great many of these lovers, as they are designated, are bold and heartless wretches, who have in some way or other obtained an introduction to or scraped acquaintance with the sometimes fair young creatures who fill in the crevices and chinks of a play, or air their limbs in the labyrinths of a march, or shake them in some strange and fascinating dance. They look upon the ballet girl, whether she be a dancer or merely below the line of utility, as legitimate prey, and without the slightest scruple will waylay or spread a net to catch her in some quiet but successful manner. They forget that many girls enter the theatre with the intention of making honorable and honest livings; that they prize their virtue as highly as the most respected young lady who moves in the topmost circles of the best society, and that the theatrical profession is only misrepresented by the men and women who give themselves up to debauchery, and allow their passions to run riot to such an extent that they win notoriety of the most unsavory and unenviable kind. It is only because the stage is besieged by so many scoundrels and villains who have either bought or begged the privileges of the back door that the profession is dangerous to young and innocent girlhood. The stage itself is pure, and could be kept so, if these hangers-on were only done away with and the youthful student and aspirant for histrionic honors were allowed to pursue her vocation unassailed by the handsome tempters who begin by flattery and after an usually easy conquest, end the dream of love by rudely casting the fallen girl aside to make room for another victim.

Stand here in the shadow awhile. The performance is at an end, and the gentlemen who haunt the stage-door are beginning to assemble. There are probably a half dozen of them. They stand around sucking the heads of their canes and anxiously awaiting the appearance of their inamoratas. A burlesque company has the theatre this week, and there are probably eighteen or twenty handsome young ladies in the combination. Nearly every one of them is a "masher," and can be depended upon to hit the centre of a weak male heart, with an arrow from her beaming eye, at one hundred yards. Some of them have received tender notes from the front of the house during the night, making appointments for a private supper at one of the free and easy restaurants; others have met their gentlemen friends before and can depend upon them to wait at the stage-door every night. Those who send the notes during the performance are of what is classed as the ultra-cheeky kind. A man of this class will do anything to make the acquaintance of a ballet or chorus girl. I knew one, one night, to push a dozen different notes under the door of Eme Rousseau's dressing-room, which opened into the parquette, and he would not desist until Samuel Colville, the manager, caused him to be dragged out of the theatre and given over to the police. Another gentleman of the same proclivities having failed to gain Alice Oates's attention when she was in Chicago, followed her to St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville, and still being unable to effect a proper "mash," endeavored to introduce himself successfully and gain her favor forever by making her a present of a pair of fast horses. Alice very sensibly refused to accept the gift, and told the fond and foolish young man to go home to his mother.

Many cases of this kind might be cited to show how easily the women who enter the profession, partly for the purpose of prostituting their art, find easy conquest among the hair-brained fellows who are only too willing to be captives and rarely try to break the fetters of roses with which they find themselves bound. But keep here in the shadow a while and watch the manœuvres of the "mashers." The stage-door opens and out comes a very modest little girl. She does not belong to the combination playing at the house this week, but is a member of the regular ballet of the theatre,—one of the few poor creatures who are obliged to get into ridiculous costumes of enormous dresses or unpadded tights, to increase the throng of court-ladies, the number of pages, or add to the proportions of a crowd. She does not dress any better than a girl who finds employment in a factory. She is young, however, and stage-struck. She has gone into the profession, braving all its dangers and with a firm resolution to go unscathed through it, carrying with her a sincere love for art and a burning desire to attain eminence. But alas! she has little talent, and absolutely no genius. This can be seen and appreciated already, although she has not had two lines to speak since entering the theatre. She has been in the employ of the house only since the beginning of the season. The "mashers" part to make room for her as with eyes cast down she trips along the street. Some of them say smart and pretty things, and some have the impudence to raise their hats and bid her good-evening. She pays no attention to them, however, and it is probably fortunate that the tall muscular gentleman in work-day clothes who has had a pass to the gallery or may not have been in the theatre at all, and who is waiting a block below to escort her home, does not know the petty insults that are put upon her or the snares that beset her path. Every night the big burly fellow waits for the modest little ballet girl to see her home in safety. The girl does not tell them at home to what dangers she is exposed, and they never learn until sometime the fall comes, when a troupe of negro minstrels or a large comic opera chorus invade the house and lay siege to the hearts of all the females they find behind the scenes.

Here come two laughing blondes through the stage door. The light falling upon their faces shows that although they try to appear light and cheery, there is weariness in their limbs and perhaps distress in their hearts. They select their male friends at once; indeed, the latter have been waiting for the gay burlesquers.

"Charley dear, I didn't see you in front to-night," says one.

"Neither did I," says the other; "but George was there. I could tell him by his red eyes and cherry nose."

"Yes," responds Charley, "there was too much champagne in that last bottle, and I didn't care about getting out of bed until half an hour ago."

"You had considerable of the juicy under your vest, last night," the first girl remarks; and then there is a laugh, and Charley says he feels in a good humor for tackling more wine at that particular moment, and the quartette move off to a hack-stand, jump into an open carriage and with lots of laughter the party are driven away to some suburban garden with wine-room attachment, or to some urban restaurant where wine may flow as freely as morality may fade away with the speeding hours, and the pleasure may last just as long as the restauranteur thinks he is being well paid for the privileges of his establishment.

Another girl comes through the stage-door. She is probably twenty-four years of age, is tall, handsome, and most attractive in her manners. There is the least suspicion of the matron in her appearance, that dignity of carriage that characterizes women after marriage being clearly defined in her motions. She knows somebody has been waiting for her,—a young fellow as tall, handsome, and attractive as herself. He sees her at once as she comes out, and goes to meet her. Her footsteps are bent in his direction also. As they come together she lays her hand upon his extended arm, and says:—

"No, Fred, I cannot go to-night. Sister is sick at the hotel, and the baby has no one to take care of her. I must go home to my child."

"Pshaw!" says Fred, "I had everything arranged for an elegant drive and a rattling supper."

"I'm so sorry, Fred;" the woman pleads, "but I can't go to-night. You will have to excuse me this once. You know it was daylight when we parted this morning."

"I know," her friend insisted; "but what's the use in worrying about the baby. She's probably asleep now and won't need your care. Come, go along."

"No, I cannot. I will not to-night." But Fred continues to plead, asking the pleasure of her presence at a supper, just for a half hour and no more. Unable to resist the warmth of his appeals, she at last consents, and it is safe to say, that once the evening's entertainment begins, morning breaks upon the sleepy babe and sick sister at the hotel before Fred and his companion are ready to part.

I knew a friend—a dramatic writer—who stood at the back door one night and waited for a pair of pretty chorus singers. My friend had another friend with him—a prominent merchant. The two gay and giddy young girls, who were only foolish flirts, did not know that the gentlemen who had invited them to a midnight ride and a late supper were married. Indeed, they may not have cared. So when the opera of "Olivette" was over and the pair of chorus singers emerged at the back door of the stage and found the two gentlemen waiting patiently for them, the girls each gave over a bundle to her particular friend to have him carry in his pocket until such time as the quartette got ready to separate. The bundles each contained a pair of pink "symmetricals"—padded tights. The young ladies informed their friends of this fact, and cautioned them to be sure to return the bundles before leaving. Well, the night wore on joyously with wine and singing and the usual pleasures of a late drive. At last, at 3 A. M., the girls got ready to return to their hotel. They were driven thither, and the entire party having imbibed more wine than was necessary, soft and sweet adieus were so tenderly spoken that nobody thought about the two pairs of pink symmetricals. The gentlemen ordered the carriage driver to speed homeward with them, and he did so. First the dramatic writer disembarked at the door of his residence, ran up stairs, pulled off his clothes, and was soon sound asleep. The merchant was soon at his own door, had settled with the driver and the carriage had just rolled away when, as he was fumbling at the latch-key he thought of the pair of tights. With one bound he cleared the steps, and running into the street, shouted after the carriage. The driver heard him, stopped, and was given the pair of tights to take around to the chorus girl's hotel that day and a $5 bill to pocket for the services. It was a narrow escape for the merchant. For the dramatic writer it was no escape at all. He was rudely awakened at ten o'clock in the morning, and the first sight that met his eyes was his infuriated wife holding the pair of pink tights by the toes and stretching them out so that the sin of the husband stood revealed to him in all its fulness.

"Where did these come from?" the exasperated wife shrieked, flaunting them before the husband's eyes.

"Where did you get them?" He asked, trembling, and unable to think of any good excuse to make.

"I got them in your coat pocket," his spouse shouted, piling up the evidence and agony in a way that was excruciating.

"By jingo! is that so?" exclaimed the husband, coming suddenly to a sitting posture in bed, and bringing his hands together vehemently. "Now, I'll bet $4 Charley ——," giving the name of his merchant friend, "put them there. He told me he had a pair that he was going to make a present of to one of the "Olivette" girls at the ——."

Brilliant as this thought was, it did not satisfy the little lady. She kept up the argument all day, and that night paid a visit to the merchant's wife, where the affair got into such a tangle that the two husbands brought in a bachelor friend to shoulder the blame, and who made the excuse that the whole thing was a trick put up by a few gentlemen (among them the bachelor was not) on the dramatic man and merchant to get them into domestic trouble, as they had succeeded in doing, beyond their most sanguine desires.

And now that we have been long enough at the back door of the theatre, let us go home and come around to-morrow night to have a view of the plagues and annoyances to be found before the foot-lights.

CHAPTER V.
BEFORE THE FOOT-LIGHTS.

There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in the stage is more than double discounted by the interest they manifest in and towards the audience. The "masher" makes it a market in which to display his fascinations and call upon the susceptible fraction of femininity to inspect and avail themselves of his heart-breaking and soul-wasting wares. Whether he modestly takes his stand in the rear of the auditorium, overcoat on arm and stove-pipe hat gracefully poised upon the thumb of his left hand, while, with polished opera-glass, he sweeps the sea of variegated millinery and obtrusive-hued cosmetics, or bravely hangs up his charms to view on the front row of the dress circle, or prominently displays them in a proscenium box, he is ever the same offensive and shameless barber-and-tailor-shop decoration, moved by a wild ambition to attract and hold feminine attention, and always attaining to a degree of notoriety among the masculine theatre-goers that keeps him overwhelmed with contempt, and causes him to be as readily recognized as if he had a tag tied to his back or spread across his vest front, declaring him to be a fisher after femininity. When the "masher" takes the shape of the young blood, whose short and tightly-fighting coat is matched by the shallowness of the crown of his straight-brimmed hat, and whose eye-glasses straddle his nose as gracefully as his twenty-five-cent cane is carried in his hand, and this irresistible combination of attractions is thrust upon the audience from a box opening, the acme of the lady-killing art is reached and if all the world does not admire the effective tableau it must be because all the world is unappreciative and the "masher" stands on an æsthetic plane to which the rest of mankind cannot hope to aspire.

THE "MASHER."

But the "masher" is only a fraction of the class of amusement patrons to which attention has been called in the opening sentence of this chapter. Apart from the people who deem it their duty to come tramping into the theatre while the performance is going on, and whose coming is followed by a triumphal flourish of banging seats, and the heaving footbeats of hurrying ushers, to the intense disgust of all who care to hear the first act of the play, there are others who have a hundred ways of annoying an audience, and who make a very effectual use of their gifts in this direction. There is the member of the "profesh,"—the gaseous advance agent, or the bloviate business manager, the actor "up a stump," or the "super" who has played the part of a silent but spectacular lictor with John McCullough or Tom Keene, and who sits in the rear of the house, but sufficiently forward to be distinctly heard by people in the dress circle, criticising the mannerisms of the ladies or gentlemen on the stage and "guying" everybody in the cast from the star down to the frightened and stiff-kneed little ballet girl whom an inscrutable Providence has allowed to wander in upon the scene occasionally, to say, "Yes, mum," or "No, mum." The leisurely but loud professional who thus disports himself must necessarily enjoy a large share of the audience's attention, and the more of this he attracts the more he is encouraged to be extravagant in his criticisms and unreserved in his elocution. He sometimes must dispute the title to obstreperous obtrusiveness with some liquor-laden auditor who has succeeded in passing the door-keeper only to find that the heat of the house has accelerated his inebriation and given freedom and license to his tongue until the "bouncer" lifts him out of his seat by the collar and deposits him in a reflective and emetic mood on the curbstone in front of the theatre. Then, too, a crowd of friends sometimes get together in the parquette, who begin a conversation before the first curtain rises and keep it going on in careless and annoying tones until the final flourish of the orchestra arrives with the dimming of the lights as the audience files out. But if the loud members of the "profesh," the interjective inebriate, and the crowd of communicative friends are not on hand to furnish diversion for the folks who are trying to follow what is going forward on the stage, there is one other never-failing source of distraction and annoyance—the giddy and gushing usher. It is safe to bet that just when the most pathetic passage of a play is reached, or the tragedian is singing smallest, a few ushers will throw themselves hastily together in the lobby and hold a mass meeting long and loud enough to be taken for a November night political meeting, if there were only a stake wagon and a few Chinese lanterns strewn around. Indeed, the usher seems to assume that he is a sort of safety-valve through which a disturbance must break out now and then to offset the quiet of the audience. If the usher isn't plying his fiendish proclivity, some bald-headed man in the parquette is sure to throw his skating rink over the back of the seat, and, with shining brow turned up towards the sun-burner in the dome, mouth rounded out like the base of a cupola and nostrils working like a suction pump, his beautiful snore will rise above the wildest roar of the orchestra and drown the mellifluous racket of the big bass drum, until some friendly hand disturbs the dreamer, and the "or-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!" that rushes up his nostrils, down his throat and out through his ears, is thus gently and perhaps only temporarily interrupted. The enthusiast—the man who is carried away by the spirit of the scene—is also a source of annoyance, and when he signifies from the balcony his willingness to take a hand in what is being enacted on the stage, damning the villain heartily, and, like the sailor of old, openly sympathizing with femininity in distress, he first becomes a target for the gallery boys' gutter-wit and finally a prey to the inexorable "bouncer," who roams around the upper tiers of every theatre and unceremoniously dumps disturbers down stairs. Last, but by no means least, in the distracting and disturbing features at theatrical performances is the peanut cruncher. He is the most cold-blooded and least excusable of all the annoyances with which amusement patrons are afflicted. He wraps his teeth around the roasted goober, utterly reckless of the distress he is stirring up in the bosoms of those around him, and he grinds and smacks and continues to crunch, stopping occasionally to charge his dental quartz-crusher anew, and always beginning on the latest goober with the greatest ferocity, while he seems to make it go ten times further, as far as time and agony are concerned, than any of its predecessors. All the other disturbance consequent upon attending a play are petty, compared with peanut-crunching, and it is the opinion of the writer that a law should be passed at once, making it a felony for any banana-stand or hand-cart man to sell peanuts to citizens who are on their way to the theatre. If such a law were passed, and if it were not a dead letter, the people whose backbones feel as if they were being fondled by a circular saw every time they hear the rustling of a goober-shell, would flop right down on their knees and renew their confidence in the wisdom of Providence.

The young men and the old men, too, who go out "between acts" to hold spirit seances with neighboring bar-keepers, while the orchestra is playing a Strauss waltz or a medley of comic opera numbers for the solace of the lovely ladies they have left behind them, are a greater nuisance to the audience of a first-class theatre than one would imagine. In nine cases out of ten, the man who goes out to see another man, as the saying is, has his seat in the middle of a row, so that it is necessary for him to make trouble for ten or a dozen persons before he can reach the aisle. He tramples on ladies' dresses, comes into collision with their knees, and sends a thrill of pain to the utmost ends of the roots of every man's corn he treads on. The same thing is repeated on the way back to his seat, and there are bitter mutterings, a great deal of subdued or smothered profanity, and fierce, rebuking looks flash from beneath the beautiful bonnets of the females. It doesn't seem to affect the nuisance any, however, for he does the same thing over every act, and at each repetition increases to the damage he does and the commotion he creates. Then, to make bad worse, he manages to surround himself with a distillery odor that assails feminine nostrils in a most offensive manner, and that will not suffer itself to be concealed or tempered by the chewing of coffee-grounds, cloves, or orange-peel. I witnessed the discomfiture of a young man of this kind, one night, and the scene was a very funny one. He occupied a seat in the orchestra, in the centre of a row of seats principally filled with ladies. As the curtain went down the young man determined to go over and have a look through the saloon opposite. Unwilling to incommode the ladies in the least, the young man, with Chesterfieldian grace, elevated a pedal extremity over the back of his chair, with the intention of going out through the aisle behind. Unfortunately he stepped between the seat and the back, the movable seat flew up, and the thirsty young man was left astride of the chair in a decidedly uncomfortable position. By this time the gallery gods had marked him for their victim. They hooted, whistled, cat-called, and made slang remarks about straddling the "ragged edge," to his evident discomfiture. In vain he attempted to disengage his No. 10's. The rest of the audience became interested, and opera-glasses were directed toward the blushing young man. The feminine giggles in his neighborhood rendered him frantic; laughter and uproar were becoming general, when a good-natured individual kindly assisted him to escape from his awkward position. Amid "thunders of applause" he disappeared.

The ladies, too, sometimes contribute largely to the annoyance of an audience. They are, as everybody knows, inveterate talkers, and insist on saying almost as much during a performance as the players say. Their criticism of the toilets of friends and of strangers also, is loud-sweeping and usually denunciatory, and they have a style of pillorying their victims in speech that is decidedly heartless, yet refreshing. But all the faults of loud and untamed talk might have been forgiven had they not introduced the tremendous big hats which rise high above their heads and stick far out from their ears completely shutting off a view of the stage from the persons immediately in the rear. Strong men have shed tears to find themselves conquered by these big hats; they have tried to peep around them, and have stood tip-toed on their chairs to have a glance over the tops of the millinery structures, but in vain. The hats were too much for them. In a mild, æsthetic way the ladies' big hats rank among the greatest plagues that have ever visited the modern play-house.

THE BIG HAT.

I was in the Grand Opera House at St. Louis, one evening, sitting in seat No. 3, row B, centre section, parquette circle. Before the play began two ladies, one dressed in black silk with a white satin jacket and black beaver hat, with long sweeping feather, and the other plainly dressed in black cashmere, with a "Sensation" hat and tassel on, came in and took seats 1 and 2 in row A, same section. Prior to settling down in their places, they looked inquiringly around the rear of the theatre, one remarking to the other as they plumped down in the chairs, "I suppose they haven't got here yet." Seats three and four adjoining them were vacant. The ladies had come unattended. After they had arranged themselves the lady with the beaver hat drew out a letter and held it up to the light so that the reporter could read it. It had a cut of one of the principal hotels at the top and was note-paper from that establishment. It said:—

To Mamie and Sadie: Your note of to-day received. We like your style and enclose two seats for Grand Opera House to-night, where we hope to meet you both and make your acquaintance.

Yours sincerely,
George and Harry.

Just as the orchestra began the overture in walked two gentlemen whom the usher showed to the vacant seats in row A. One of the men was tall, bald, portly and rather good-looking and well dressed; he had a sandy moustache, and what hair was left on his head was reddish, crisp, and curly. He was probably forty-five years old. His companion was probably not more than twenty-one, tall, thin, dark-complexioned, with but a semblance of a moustache. The ladies smiled as the gentlemen took their places. The men looked at each other, winked, and laughed. When the two were seated, the bald-headed man made a close and evidently satisfactory scrutiny of the ladies, and catching the eye of the one in the beaver hat, the two exchanged smiles—not broad, committal grins, but soft smiles of mutual recognition. The second lady only dared to look sideways now and then. The second gentleman, who sat next to the ladies, was rather shy and kept his hand up to his face from beginning to end of the play. It was evident this was the first time the quartette had met, and it was evident also that they had made up their minds to act with all due decorum while in the theatre. Smiles were now and then exchanged, but no words were spoken. Once one of the ladies sent her programme to the bald man, who had none. During the third act of the play the baldhead began writing short notes which the lady in the beaver hat answered affirmatively with a nod of her head. When the show was over the two ladies went around one street, the two men around another, and they met in the middle of the block opposite the theatre. There was a brief conversation in which a great deal of tittering was heard, and then the quartette proceeded to a quiet restaurant of the most questionable reputation and took one of the private supper-rooms, which are at the disposal of people whose visit to the establishment is not by any means for the sole purpose of drinking and eating, but has a broad and very unmistakable suggestion of immorality in it.

GEORGE AND HARRY.

LOUISE MONTAGUE.

The key to the whole affair can be found in the following advertisement, published in the Globe-Democrat of the preceding Sunday:—

Personal.—Two gentlemen of middle age and means desire to become acquainted with two vivacious, fun-loving young ladies who like to go to the theatre. Address George and Harry, this office.

MAUD BRANSCOMB.

George and Harry had received an answer to this advertisement from "Mamie and Sadie," and, just to meet and become acquainted with them, had purchased the four seats in row A, centre section, Grand Opera House, making the theatre their place of assignation. "Mamie and Sadie" were by no means the innocent and unsophisticated creatures they seemed to be. One of them was the wife of a travelling man who was necessarily away from home ten months in a year; the other was nymph du pave—a street-walker—who scoured the principal thoroughfares at night for victims to carry to her "furnished room," and who had been educated up to the "personal" racket by the lonely and wayward young wife of the commercial drummer.

So much for the noisy, otherwise obtrusive phases of the subject. The ladies who go to the theatre to display themselves, to flash their jewels and flaunt their silks and laces in the faces of the community, have become so accustomed to the general run of theatrical attractions that they are really no longer spectators, and may be justly classed among the distracting agencies in the audience. Their mission is a "mashing" one to a certain extent, but it is "mashing" of a vain and by no means harmful character. Other ladies are seen in the dress circle and the boxes who do not disguise the fact that they have come to the theatre to fascinate the too, too yielding men. At the matinees there are women of questionable repute who unblushingly advertise their calling and who must be set down as a feature most objectionable to the respectable portion of any community. They behave themselves as far as words or actions go, but their mere presence in the play-house is an annoyance that refined and elegant people cannot tolerate. That is all about them. Now for the very worst practices that are occasionally noted in theatres, and that the managers know very little if anything about,—the women who are there for nefarious purposes, and the men who have other ideas than gratifying their vanity or merely making heart-conquests. It is a notorious and flagrant fact that fast women use the theatre as places of assignation, wherein they meet old and make new acquaintances, and it is equally notorious that men whose whole energy seems bent to the distruction of innocent girlhood make it a rendezvous for the purpose of selecting and snaring their victims.

It is perfectly safe to assume that the cunning and sinful pair fleeced George and Harry before they got through with them.

The very same evening my attention was called by a young lady to a thinly-bearded, spectacled, sickly-looking middle-aged man who sat in the next seat to the lady, and who, she complained, had stepped on her foot several times and in other ways tried to attract her attention and get her into a conversation. I at once recognized the fellow as one of an unscrupulous set who pored over big ledgers in the Court-House, and gave the greater portion of their time to discussions concerning female friends of ill-repute, and to boasting of the ruin they had brought or were about to bring to some innocent young girl.

The same man was in the habit of buying single seats in the dress circle and visited the theatre frequently. He represents a class of venerable, but iniquitous fellows who make a practice of mixing in among the ladies, in the hope of scraping an occasional acquaintance, and who have no good intention in desiring to extend the circle of their female friends. They should be kept out of every respectable place of amusement.

SELINA DOLARO.

CHAPTER VI.
BEHIND THE SCENES.

My first experiences behind the scenes were in a small, dark cellar, owned by a man who is now a member of the Missouri Legislature, and where daily and nightly a select company of would-be Ethiopian comedians of tender age gave performances to small crowds of children each of whom had paid an admission fee in pins or corks—for we valued the corks highly as a necessary portion of our stock in trade; we charred many a one to blacken our faces and treasured them as if they were worth their weight in gold. Our stage was roughly constructed of boards laid upon barrels; bagging material hung around the rear and sides of the stage to shut in the mysteries of the remarkable dressing-room we had, and an old gray cloth and blanket formed the curtain which parted in the middle in the manner of the stage curtains of the Elizabethan age. Bits of candles were our foot-lights and the audience, made up of boys and girls, were satisfied to sit for hours on rude benches stretched across the width of the cellar. We played nothing but black-face pieces, and as they were not taken from books, but were the memories of sketches we had seen in some pretentious theatrical resort, they were, of course, short and entirely crude. No member of that little band has risen to greatness in the theatrical profession, but I think every one of them now living looks back fondly to the triumphs of our cellar career. To me that rude stage and its gunny-bag surroundings were more interesting and full of mystery than have been any of the wonderful and beautiful temples of Thespis which I have since entered; and I think when I played the part of Ephraim in some ludicrous sketch, and in response to the old man's cries from the stage, "Ephraim! Ephraim! say boy, whar is you?" and I got up suddenly in the rear of the audience and shouted back, "Hyar I is, boss!"—when this supreme moment arrived, and the crowd looked back surprised and laughed, the glow of conscious pride and artistic power that filled my heart was as genuinely agreeable as the thunders of applause that greet Booth or John McCullough when their admirers call them before the curtain after a great act.

JOHN W. M'CULLOUGH.

I have only a dim recollection of my first introduction to the professional stage. The fairy spectacle of "Cherry and Fair Star" was running at a local theatre, with Robert McWade, of recent Rip Van Winkle fame, and Miss Wallace in the cast. By some good or bad fortune I happened to be loitering in the neighborhood of the back door of the theatre, when the captain of the supers called me and hired me at twenty-five cents a night to go on as imp in one of the spectacular scenes. I was on hand promptly, and shall never forget my wonder and astonishment at getting a first glimpse of the secrets of the stage. It was almost pitch dark when the back door was entered, and there was nothing in the place at all suggestive of the glamour that the foot-lights throw upon the scene. Huge clouds of black canvas rose upon all sides, and men and boys in the dirtiest of workday clothes were the only persons met. The noise of hammer and saw rose on various sides, and it seemed as if the stage had not been one-half prepared for the play that the curtain would ring up on within an hour. The dressing-room in which fifty or sixty boys were arraying themselves looked like the interior of a costume establishment after a cyclone had passed through it. But when all were dressed, and the fairies and the goblins assembled in the "wings," and the foot-lights were turned up and the orchestra outside was rattling through some inspiring air, the small boy in impish raiment was immediately wrapt into a seventh heaven of delight. There was a multitude of girls in very low-necked and short dresses with glowing flesh-colored tights that seemed such inadequate covering for the rounded limbs that blushing was inevitable. The bright colors in their cheeks, the blackly outlined eyes and the blonde wigs added to the interest of the new charms. Every bit of glorious color in the gorgeous scenery appeared to flash out amid the flood of light. I ran against every variety of demon that was ever known to M. D. Conway, and was pushed out of the way of a hundred persons only to find myself obstructing somebody else's progress. The magnificent revelations of that night filled me with awe and astonishment for many a week afterward. It was the only night I appeared as an imp, for I had accepted the engagement without parental knowledge or consent, and when they learned of my success they at once put a decided and impressive veto upon any further efforts in the direction of the professional stage.

That first experience was not, of course, as abundant in opportunities for observation as later experiences have been. The world behind the foot-lights—the mimic world as it is called—is a realm of the most startling and pleasing kind. Not only is there food for wonder in what the eye falls upon, but the people who furnish the fun for the world are often among themselves as prolific of pleasantry as if they expected the applause of a full house to follow their jokes. They say and do the strangest things, and for a visitor who is investigating the mysteries of their surroundings, often make the time as lively and the surroundings as enjoyable as it is possible for really clever and good-natured people to do. The best time to go behind the scenes is during the engagement of a burlesque or comic opera company, and I will introduce the reader to a happy crowd of this kind that I once found myself in.

BELLE HOWITT IN "BLACK CROOK."

In 1879 the Kiralfys brought out their spectacular burlesque entitled "A Trip to the Moon," and I had the pleasure, during its run, of dropping in behind the scenes of a Western theatre one night to have a peep at the pictures there presented. Now, the moon is something like two hundred and eighty thousand miles from here—that is the one reputed to be made of green cheese, and having phases as numerous as the occasions that ring the April skies with rainbows. But the Kiralfys' moon was in another firmament, shining out amid stars that, when they wink their twinkling eyes or shuffle their shining feet, as they do frequently, the celestial shiners have got to put on their cloud ulsters, and sit down while the lachrymose eyes of the heavens give up their tears. That is why it was raining torrents the night I went behind the scenes with Mr. Bolossy Kiralfy. As I went in the back door Prof. Microscope, one of the funny characters in the play, brushed by with a telescope under his arm that was large enough to put Lord Ross's famous spy-glass into its vest pocket, if it had one. The moon to which the trip was to be made was not so far as two hundred and eighty thousand miles by a half block or so, but it was a very funny world, full of gaslight and laughter, and with the most mirthful sports imaginable on its glowing surface. I was inclined somewhat to lunar ways, and thinking like a great many other credulous mortals, that the trans-atmospheric trip was really made in a cartridge-built coach that was fired out of a huge mortar at the rate of about eighteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds miles a minute, had fully made up my mind to ride on the roof or cow-catcher of the concern, at whatever risks to life and limb space might abound in. I expected to find something like a solid space-annihilating Columbiad behind the scenes, but I was somewhat mistaken.

Just before the curtain was rung up I found myself in the midst of the fairy world upon which the brilliancy of the foot-light falls. While the curtain was still down, and before the gasman had opened the floodgates of splendor, the place was dark; not pitch dark, but pretty dark, compared with the brilliancy that shown in, over, and around its space a few minutes later. And then its intricacies, pieces of scenery here, various properties there, and sections of everything and anything scattered anywhere and everywhere, made a fellow feel as if the place was darker than it really was. Glittering and glowing as the stage appears before the foot-lights; wonderfully romantic as are its shades and lights, its love and laughter; and astounding as are its scenic effects; its area and surroundings are terribly realistic when the foot-lights are left behind, and the "business" of a play is once laid bare. Here the sighs of love-sick maidens and the spooning of gilt-edged but uncourageous wooers, the tears of injured innocence and the self-gratulations of hard-hearted villains who still pursue the flying female, the prattle of young mouths and the mumblings of "old men" and "old women," are lost with the departed scenes of the play in the unceasing desire of the actors to get back into their proper social and friendly relations to each other, and, once the prompter's book is closed, stage talk and stage manner are under metaphoric lock and key, and romance is for a while at an end.

JNO. A. STEVENS.

On opera bouffe or burlesque nights, however, a great deal of the stage charm clings to the characters even when off the stage, and one is compelled to be interested in the grotesqueness of those to be met in the side scenes—the odd and often pretty creatures who stand, sit, lie or lean around in the "wings" at their own sweet leisure and pleasure. There is something so indescribably funny in the costumes, in the facial make-up, and all that, of the happy opera-bouffer or festive burlesquer, that the eye follows a quaint character through the scenes with the same inalienable interest as that with which the small boy hovers around the heels of an Italian with a hand-organ and a monkey. The eye, however, must not, cannot linger or languish long upon a single one of these walking wardrobes. There is a moving panorama constantly in front of the surprised vision, and before an electric flash could photograph one single individual in his droll toggery there would be a dozen or more "shassaying" before the camera.

There was leaning against one of the "wings" a naive and sprightly piece of feminine beauty, set off in the handsomest and most enticing manner in the world by a well-rounded, gracefully curved pair of pink tights, a white satin surtout and mantelet, plentifully besprent with glittering braid and flashing beads, dainty silk slippers that would have made a Chinese princess weep with envy, and a jaunty white hat to match. She was, of course, to figure as the charming little hero of the evening, if burlesques can be said to have such things as heroes. A doughty old chap, with bristling hair and a porcupine moustache, was standing by talking to little pink tights. He was gotten up like a circus poster in forty colors, with a plentiful array of red on his head and legs and a sort of sickly-looking, rainbow-sandwich built about his body. Red, blue and black streaks straying over his features made it appear as if he might have been assigned the role of an ogre and was accustomed to nightly look around for his fair companion to make a meal of her. I immediately made friends with the comic horror and the little lady in pink tights and learned who and what they were. The latter was (in the play, of course) a nobby young blood known as Prince Caprice, personated by Miss Alice Harrison; the red-legged comedian was King Pin, the young Prince's funny father and Mr. Louis Harrison was hidden under the remarkable royal disguise.

"Well, when are we going to start for the moon?" I asked, good-humoredly.

"In a few fleeting moments," was the regal dough-belly's reply.

"And are all these folks going into the projectile?" pointing to the crowd of curious characters passing and repassing us.

"Not if the court knows herself and she thinks she does," put in the Prince, pertly; "only the King, Prof. Microscope and myself ride in the cab."

Prof. Microscope was a long, scrawny fellow. He was twirling a shaggy moustache and buzzing a handsome and not at all bashful ballet girl at the same time, a short distance away. He was gotten up in a blue-striped, swallow-tail coat, long enough, if the Professor cared about lending or renting it out, to be used for a streamer on the City Hall flagstaff, and short enough in the back to have the waist-buttons constantly challenging the collar to a prize fight or wrestling match. Very tight black pants, a luxuriantly frilled shirt front, fluted cuffs, and white hair allowed to grow to the length worn by Buffalo Bill, completed his outfit. When I was introduced to him, the Professor swore by the bones of Copernicus's grandmother on a volume of patent office reports that he was the sole originator and engineer of the only direct moon line, and he'd bet his boots or eat his hat that it never took more than fifteen minutes to make the trip.

"You see," said King Pin, "that Microscope is a queer fellow—not a coney man, you mind."

"Although," said the Prince, "he now and then casts his lot on the turn of the die."

LILLIE WEST.

"Yes, his lot of last year's clothing," the jolly King remarked, "on the turn of the dyer."

This effort resulted in six of the supers, who were gotten up in voluminous dominoes with elaborate, but inexpensive, pasteboard trimmings, and who were within hearing distance, falling stiff and stark to the stage.

"Does this kind of thing occur often?" I inquired.

"Oh," growled the Professor, "that gag was stuffed and on exhibition at the Centennial. It was found in an Indian mound near Memphis, and is old."

And so the talk went on for a while, when up went the curtain and King Pin leaping on the stage amidst the laughter and plaudits of the house, told how the pretty Prince Caprice had tired of mundane things and was heavily sighing for the fountain-head of the lambent silvery moonlight. Microscope, who was at the head of the Royal College of Astronomers, was besought to do something to aid the Prince in accomplishing the journey to Merrie Moonland, and in a neat speech unfolded his plans for a grand dynamo-etherial line that would speedily carry the Prince to the wished-for happy Land of Luna.

PAULINE MARKHAM.

Then came the glorious moment when the flight moonwards was to be made. I hurried around to the prompter's side of the stage where I saw the mouth of the huge cannon gaping, and got there as they were about to fire it. Imagine my surprise to find the extraordinary piece of ordnance made entirely of pasteboard, a substance that a few grains of gunpowder would blow into as many pieces as the leaves of Vallambrosia. Still the passengers were to be fired out of this contrivance, and I felt that if they and the cannon could stand it, it was none of my business. It had all been explained to the audience, that King Pin, Prince Caprice and Prof. Microscope were the only three persons to be given seats in the cartridge-cab in which the wonderful journey was to be made. The question therefore naturally arose, what was to become of the multitude of characters that crowded the "wings." There were "supers" in black, yellow and mottled dominoes with high papier-maché casques, and huge ear-trimmings that reminded one of the flaps that decorate the sides of a Chicago girl's head, or the sails of a lake lumberman. There were star-gazers with zodiacal garments and tin telescopes, all set off by great pairs of soda-bottle-lens eye-glasses, that gave them the air of a Secchi, or somebody else of astronomical aspect. There were guards who shouldered tooth brushes made entirely of wood, with index hands surmounting the tops of their chapeaux and serving to indicate that their intellects had gone moon-hunting; and there were other creatures, among them, horrible genii, who started for the moon by some short route across lots and got there long before the regular excursionists.

But the corps de ballet! It was everything but a beauty. If there is anything likely to strike a theatre-goer as ludicrous, it is an awkward squad of over-grown girls, with gauze-garnished limbs and dissipated-looking blonde wigs. A precocious ballet-debutante is a bit of Dead-Sea fruit shot backward off Terpsichore's head, and if the bullet does not lay Terpsichore herself out in a first-class undertaker's style it is because Terpsichore happens to be in terribly good luck. These reflections were suggested by a sight of the intermingling danseuses that kept pretty well in the rear of the stage. You could tell the height to which each one could safely fling her foot on looking at her. The girl who was making her first appearance had not yet gotten over her splayfootedness, and every time she took a peep at the audience and began to realize the airiness of her costume and gawkiness of her manners, her knees knocked together fast enough to keep a few notes ahead of her chattering teeth. And her dress! there was nothing marvellous about it—nothing that would carry a person off into the ideal financial realms of a national debt. It was powerfully plain with a stiff and provoking effort at showiness. The next line, who also may be classed as figurantes, are plainly to be distinguished by their natty air of sauciness and a noticeable clipping-off of the super-abundant clothing that encumbers the latest additions to the corps. The coryphees, though, are radiant in glittering, close-fitting silver mail, and there is acquired grace in their actions, and a high haughtiness in the toss of their heads. The premieres everybody understands and recognizes, who has once seen them pirouette on their toes or slam around in a wild ecstasy of dancing delight that would give anybody else a vertigo and lead to numerous and possibly serious dislocations. Well, all these were whispering or prattling together, in the way of the scene-shifters, who went around reckless of their language, with sleeves rolled up and anxious faces and questioning eyes turned upon all whom they encountered there. It struck me, as I gazed upon this almost naked and highly interesting ballet, that if the moon had no atmosphere, as those who know best claim, the costumes of these gay and giddy girls were airy enough to stock it with a pretty extensive and healthy one. Out of this jumble of scenery and from the midst of these jostling characters the start was made for the moon. There was no carriage, no cartridge, no load in the cannon. Her trip as a trip was a most undisguised and diaphanous fraud. While King Pin, the Prince, the Professor, and the rest were arranging themselves in a happy tableau behind the second "flat" bang! went a gun fired by one of the supers, across the stage flew several "dummies" or stuffed figures in the direction of the roof, the scene opened and lo the jolly crowd were in Moonland. King Pin, Prince Caprice and Microscope were there together, as fresh and fair as if they were accustomed to making two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-mile trips. The monarch of the moon, King Kosmos (W. A. Mestayer), after having summoned his retinue of Selenites—the same long-robed, pillow-stomached and pasteboard-eared crew who had died behind the scenes a few minutes before from an over-stroke of punning—and having things explained to everybody's satisfaction, came forward and fell on the several necks of the terrestrial visitors, was punched in the paunch, by the King, enough times to set all the Moonites into roars of laughter, and then they all joined in stretching their necks and rasping their throats in a welcoming chorus to their guests.

ADAH ISAAC MENKEN.

It was unfortunate for the visitors that King Kosmos had a beautiful little princess of a daughter called Fantasia (Miss Gracie Plaisted), with a voice that rippled and rolled in music, earthly as the bulbul's notes and celestial as the songs of the spheres; and, of course, foolish little Caprice had to go and fall in love with her and sing innumerable sweet songs to her, all of which only got poor old Pin and his friends into all sorts of trouble. This they finally managed to get out of by returning to mother earth in a gorgeously-appointed flying ship, as grand as Cleopatra's galley. Before decamping, however, Moonland was visited in every part, and its gardens of silver-tinged foliage, its crystal palaces, that made pale Luna's light more brilliant still, its icy mountains with mass of frostage, in and about which the ballet wound in the graceful rhythm of "Les Flocons de Niege," were all taken in, and notwithstanding an occasional hitch in getting the panorama around, everything in this new and gleaming sphere was really glorious for a first-night visit.

MILLIE LA FONTE.

CHAPTER VII.
IN THE DRESSING-ROOM.

These same people who appear grotesque, and out of the pale of ordinary every-day existence on the stage, are nearly always the most unromantic and realistic-looking folks in the world when you meet them on the street. The extraordinary metamorphosis they go through to arrive at an appearance suitable for presentation before the foot-lights is a secret of the dressing-room. In the privacy of this carefully guarded apartment street clothes are laid aside, and what is more wonderful still, faces, eyes, and hands and lower limbs, too, very frequently, are subjected to processes that produce the most remarkable results. Anybody who has seen Nat Goodwin, of "Hobbies" reputation, will readily understand that it takes a pretty extensive transformation to change his appearance from that of the man to that of Prof. Pygmalion Whiffles, the eccentric character that makes "Hobbies" the laughable and popular play that it is. Mr. Goodwin is young—not more than twenty-four—but I saw him slip out of his youthfulness into the bald-headed, red-wigged and merry old professor one night in almost as short a time as it takes a boy to fall through a four-story elevator shaft. I accompanied him to his dressing-room one night. He had just a few minutes to get ready, and was in proper shape in time to make his appearance at the upper entrance, amid the crash that always accompanies his first appearance in the play, and gives him an opportunity to make some remarks about Maj. Bang's dog, which has ripped his "ulster" up the back. Well, Goodwin went to work the moment he was inside the door. Off came the everyday clothes, and in a jiffy on went the one white and black stocking that will be remembered by all who have seen "Hobbies." The shirt, coat, pantaloons, linen duster and hat that forms the rest of his toilet, were carefully laid upon a side table. The shirt was flapped over his head in a second, the pantaloons went on like lightning and then bending towards a looking-glass he dipped his fingers in red and black color boxes, and soon had the necessary painting done upon his face. The velvet coat followed the making-up of the face; then the torn linen duster, finally the red wig with its charming bald spot, was clapped upon his head; the white hat was gracefully tilted over it, and with a call to the man who played Arthur Doveleigh for his cane and an "I'll see you later" to his visitor, he bounded up the stairs, and the next moment, as I left the stage door, I could hear the hand-clapping and the howls of delight with which a crowded house was greeting their favorite.

BALLET GIRLS DRESSING-ROOM.

The great value of the art of making-up, as the preparation for participation in a play is called, both in the matter of painting the face and costuming, will be understood when the story told by Maze Edwards, who was Edwin Booth's manager during the tour of 1881–2, is recited. * * * The company got to Waterbury, Connecticut, ahead of their baggage. When the hour for the performance arrived the baggage, consisting of all their costumes and paraphernalia was still missing. The manager was in a terrible plight; but I will let him tell his own story as he told it to a newspaper reporter a short time after the occurrence.

EDWIN BOOTH.

"When I found the baggage, with the costumes, had not arrived," said Edwards, "I was just going to throw myself into the river. Then I thought I would go and tell Mr. Booth about it and bid good-bye to some of the people who had always thought a good deal of me, before killing myself. To my astonishment Mr. Booth took it as coolly as you would take an invitation to drink. He said, inasmuch as the people were in the hall, he would make a few remarks to them about the accident, and then they would go on and play three acts of "Hamlet" in the clothes they had on. And so it was fixed up that way. Well, the thought of Hamlet in a short-tailed coat and light pants almost made me sick, and when Mr. Booth came upon the stage, looking like an Episcopal minister, with a Knight Templar's cheese knife that he borrowed, I couldn't think of anything but Hamlet. I forgot all about his clothes, and I believe if he had only had on a pair of sailor's pants and a red flannel fireman's shirt that the people would only have seen Hamlet. I tell you he is the greatest actor that ever lived. The people sat perfectly still, and seemed wrapped up in Booth. That is, they were when they did not look at the other fellows. But when they took Laertes, with a short, ham-fat coat on, a pair of lah-de-dah pants and a pan-cake hat, it seemed to me I could hear them smile. And the King, Hamlet's step-father, he was a sight. Imagine a king with a cut-away checkered coat, a Pullman car blanket thrown over his shoulder for a robe, and a leg of a chair for a sceptre, mashed on a queen with a travelling dress and a gray woollen basque with buttons on it. And think of Polonius, with a linen duster and a straw hat with a blue ribbon on. Oh, it made me tired. Ophelia was all right enough. She had on some crazy clothes that she had been travelling in, and we got some straw out of a barn and some artificial flowers off the bonnets, and she pulled through pretty well. But the Ghost! You would have died to have seen the Ghost. He had on one of those long hand-me-down ulster overcoats with a buckle on the back as big as a currycomb and the belt was hanging down on both sides. The boys got him a green mosquito bar to put over it, and with a stuffed club for a sceptre, he fell over a chair and then came on. I should have laughed if I had been on my death-bed when he said to Hamlet, 'I am thy father's ghost!' He looked more like a drummer for a wholesale confectionery house, with a sort of tin skimmer on his head, and I believe the audience would have gone wild with laughter if it had not been for Mr. Booth. I don't believe you could get him to laugh on the stage for a million dollars. He just looked at the Ghost as though it was a genuine one, and the audience looked at Booth, and forgot all about the ulster and the Ghost's pants being rolled up at the bottom. It was probably the greatest triumph that an actor ever had for Mr. Booth to compel the vast audience to forget the ludicrous surroundings and think only of the character he was portraying. I wouldn't have missed the night's performance for a thousand dollars, and when, at 10 o'clock, I heard the boys getting the trunks up-stairs, I was almost sorry. The last two acts were played with the costumes, but they were no better performed than the first. Still, I think, on the whole, I had rather the baggage would be there. It makes a manager feel better."

M'KEE RANKIN.

In the olden times, and in the days of the early American theatre, the dressing-rooms were beneath the stage, and were by no means the perfect and cozy places that are to be found in existence at present. Hodgkinson, I think it was, who, during the last century built the first theatre having dressing-rooms above and upon the stage. Later improvement has removed the dressing-rooms, in first-class houses, entirely from the stage, ample and neatly-furnished rooms being provided in adjoining buildings. This change has been necessitated by the demand made upon theatrical managers for greater stage room and better opportunities than they had heretofore in keeping up with the growing taste for extensive scenic representations with magnificent appointments. The star of a company, male or female, always has the best dressing-room the establishment affords, and it is generally very close to the green-room. Minor performers share their rooms; and the captain of the supers usually has an apartment beneath the stage where he gathers his Roman mob, or marshals his mail-clad but awkward squad of warriors. No better burlesque upon this ill-clothed, dirty-faced, knock-kneed and ridiculous theatrical contingent has ever been presented either in type or on the stage, than the character of the Roman Lictor created by Louis Harrison in San Francisco, and afterwards relegated to another performer in "Photos." The story is told that Harrison having been cast for the part of a lictor in a tragedy in which John McCullough took the leading role, he grew offended, having higher aspirations than mere utility business, and determined to make the part funny and, if possible, spoil the scene. When he came on the stage, he was in war-paint, his face strewn with gory colors and intermingling black; he had on the dirtiest costume he could find, with a battered rusty helmet, and carried the insignia of his office so awkwardly, while his knees came together his toes turned in, and his general attitude was that of a man in the third week of a hard spree. He brought the house down, spoiled the play and was discharged for making too much of a success of the part. But this is a digression, and we must hurry back to the dressing-room.

THE THREE VILLAS.

The most difficult part of the actor's work preliminary to going on the stage is to make-up his face. By the judicious use of powder and paint, and a proper disposition of wigs, beard, etc., the oldest man may be made to assume juvenility and the youngest to seem to bend with the weight of years. Wigs are to a great extent reliable, but the old fashioned false beard is clumsy and apt to make the wearer feel dissatisfied with himself and the rest of the world. But the old fashioned beard is going out of style, and gray wool stuck on the face with grease is generally used. I can recall vividly how a beard of this sort worn by poor George Conly, the basso, while singing the part of Gaspard in "The Chimes of Normandy," while with the Emma Abbot troupe last season, struck me as the perfection of deception. It always requires a dresser to put on one of these beards in anything like a satisfactory manner.

An old actor of the "crushed" type who has been almost forced off the stage and into running a dramatic college, by the young and pushing element in the profession, in an interview had with him lately in Philadelphia, remarked, as he looked with evident interest upon the crowds in the street: "I like to study faces. To my mind it is the most absorbing study in the world—that of men's faces. You see, the thing has more interest for me than for the run of men even in my profession, because I'm an enthusiast in a certain sense. I belong to the times when the study and make-up of faces was mighty important in the theatrical line. It wasn't such a long time ago, either; but the times have changed since then, until now there seems to be almost no effort at all to make-up and look your part."

"It must be a great deal of trouble to make up every night."

"Oh, but, my boy, look at the result! Go down to the theatre, where they still do it, and if only five years have elapsed between the acts, see how it is shown on every face on the stage."

"It is difficult to make-up well, is it not?"

"Well, no," said the actor, lighting a fresh cigar and assuming a more confidential pose, "the rules are simple enough, and with a little practice, almost any amateur could learn to make up artistically if he has any eye for effect. Some parts, like Romeo, Charles Surface, Sidney Darrell or Claude Melnotte, require very little make up for a young and good-looking actor. The face and neck should be thoroughly covered with white powder, and the cheek bones and chin lightly touched with rouge, which should not be too red. Then, as the lover ought to look handsome, he should draw a fine black line under his lower eye-lashes with a camel hair brush and burnt umber. This makes the eyes brilliant. I'm sure it isn't much trouble to make up that way."

SARAH BERNHARDT.

"Other characters are harder, though?"

"Oh, immeasurably so. But to make a maturer man, like Cassio, Iago, Mercutio, John Midway or Hawksley, it requires only a little more work. After the actor has laid on his powder and rouged his face pretty heavily—for men are commonly rather red-faced—he must take his brush and umber and trace some lines from the outer corners of the eyes, and other lines down toward the corners of the mouth from the nose. In short, he must make the 'crows' feet that are visible in all men who have lived over thirty years in this tantalizing world of ours. Then the chin should be touched with a little blue powder, which makes it look as if recently shaved. These precautions will make the most juvenile face look mature. If he has to go further, and look like old age, as in such characters as Lear, Virginius,—for, as I said before, Virginius, was an old man,—Richelieu, Sir Peter Teazle, and so on, more work is necessary. Heavy false eyebrows must be pasted on, and the eye-hollow darkened and fairly crowded with lines. Wrinkles must be painted across the forehead, furrows down the cheeks, downward lines from the corners of the mouth, and (very important) three or four heavy wrinkles painted around the neck to give it the shriveled appearance common to old age. The hollow over the upper lip should be darkened, and also the hollow under the lower lip. This gives the mouth the pinched and toothless look. A little powdered antimony on the cheeks makes them look fallen in and shrunken. Then tone the face down with a delicate coating of pearl powder, and you'll have as old a looking man as you'd care to see."

"How does it feel?"

"At first your face feels tightened, and the muscles don't play easily, but after a few grimaces it comes out all right. It's a great relief to get off, however, after three hours' work."

"It must cause rather mournful forecasts when a man looks on his own face made up for the age of, say, eighty years."

"Not so bad as when he makes up for a corpse, however. I'll never forget the first glance I had at my face after it had been made up for Gaston's death scene, when playing the "Man of the Iron Mask," in '62. It positively appalled me, sir, and I lay awake all that night thinking of it, and dreamed of myself in a coffin for a month afterward."

"How is it done?"

"Well, it varies slightly. You see, such characters as Lear, Virginius, Werner, and Beverly are before the audience some time before they actually die, and therefore, their faces cannot be made very corpse-like; but Mathias in 'The Bells,' Louis XI., Gaston and Danny Mann are discovered dying when the scene opens, or are brought in dead, so that their faces can be made extreme. For the last series the face and neck should be spread with prepared pink to give it a livid hue in places. Then put a deep shading of powdered antimony under the eyebrows and well into the hollow of the eye, on the cheeks, throat and temples. This is very effective, as it gives the face that dreadfully sunken appearance as in death. The sides of the nose and even the upper lip should also be darkened, and the lips powdered blue. Then the face will look about as dead as it would three hours after a real death."

"In the make up of grotesque faces do they use false noses and chins?"

"Very rarely. Usually the method is to stick some wool on the nose with a gum and mold it in whatever shape you will; then powder and paint it as you would the natural nose for grotesque or comedy parts. Paste is put on with gum, instead of wool, sometimes. Clowns have to encase themselves fairly with whiting, and they find this trouble enough without building up noses or cheeks. Grotesque artists have to work hard with their faces as a rule, but they are often repaid by discovering neat points. Many of our best Dutch and Irish comedians owe their first lift to a lucky make-up."

THE LATE ADELAIDE NEILSON.

"I suppose there are types of the representation of different nationalities?"

"Well, a gentleman is usually made-up the same, no matter where he may be supposed to belong, but the caricature is usually one of the well-known make-ups. A Frenchman has to be powdered with dark rouge, and has his eyebrows blackened with dark ink. All dark characters, as mulattoes, creoles, Spaniards, and so on, are done with whiting and dark rouge, with plenty of burnt cork and umber."

"Is much work necessary on the hands?"

"In witches it is of great importance that the hands and arms should be skinny and bony. This is usually done by a liberal powdering of Dutch pink, and painting between the knuckles with burnt umber. Painting between the knuckles, you see, makes them look large and bony. But this sounds a good deal like ancient history, now, does it not? The art is falling into disuse, my boy, and I've no doubt the time is not far off when we shall have youngsters playing old men with signs on their back reading, 'Please, sir, I'm eighty years old,' while their faces are as fresh as daisies."

"To what do you attribute this tendency."

"Laziness. The theatrical age of to-day is a wonder to me. The entire profession wants to star. An actor plays old men now simply for a living, while he matures his plans for his contemplated starring tour. An actress does old women heavies or juveniles only until she can find a capitalist who will enable her to star, and none of them seem to take any pride in the minor parts. Hence, they don't take the trouble to make up artistically, and the stage is robbed of its chief charm—realism."

DRESSING AN ACTRESS' HAIR.

The looking-glass and the pots of paint and boxes of powder upon the shelves of the dressing-room are as important adjuncts of the play, and even more important, sometimes, than the huge boxes and trunks filled with costumes that are found in the same place. They hold their place amid the diamond necklaces and brilliant bracelets of the prima donna, the cheaper jewels of the dramatic artiste and the crowns of kings and helmets of warriors. Their power is great, and that power is fully recognized by all who are within the domain of dramatic art. And the actor or actress, the prima donna and the swell tenor, all generally make it their business to attend to their own beautification in this way themselves. Nearly all star actors carry male servants who are known as dressers, and all prominent actresses have maids who accompany them to the theatre and these help to complete the artiste's toilets. Formerly there were barbers and hair-dressers, as well as other specialists, attached to places of amusement, and whose business it was to shave an actor or dress a head of hair before the performance. Many establishments retain these yet, but they are not as numerous or as well-known as they were before the days of travelling combinations. Apropos the theatrical hair-dresser there is quite an interesting story told. One of this class fell in love with a popular actress he was frequently called upon to beautify. He confessed his devouring passion on his knees and she laughed him to scorn. More than that, she insisted on his continuing his ministrations to her and made him the butt of her heartless gibes while he was devoting himself to enhance her cruel loveliness. The iron entered his soul and he swore vengeance. One night, when he had to prepare her for a most important part, he surpassed himself in the splendor of her crowning decoration. Having finished he anointed her golden locks with a compound of a peculiarly fascinating aromatic odor, which so attracted his callous enslaver's notice that she asked him what it was.

"It is a mixture of my own, Madame," he replied. "I call it the last breath of love."

The actress remarked that she would call him a fool, and he bowed and withdrew. A few minutes later, when she appeared behind the foot-lights, instead of the roar of applause which she expected, she was hailed with a tempestuous scream of laughter. Her discarded lover had had his revenge. He had dyed her golden locks with a chemical which turned pea green as soon as it was dry. She dresses what hair she has left herself now, while he is boss of a five-cent shaving emporium, never speaks to any lady but his landlady, and has a Chinaman to do his washing.

If there is a ballet or a burlesque crowd or comic opera chorus in the theatre the scenes in their rooms will be of a more diversified nature. The girls in addition to making their faces pretty, must have their limbs so shapely that no fault can be found even by the most cavilling of the gentlemen who crowd up behind the orchestra while the house holds a host of female attractions. The rage for limb exhibitions rendered it necessary that some means should be devised to hide the calves or poorly turned ankles of the creatures whose limbs are displayed. Happily the symmetricals, as padded tights are called, were hit upon and now you cannot find an unsightly piece of underpinning in any combination, and even the poor ballet girl who does page's parts or helps to make up a crowd for $6 a week, will, if she has sense and taste, go early to the dealer in theatrical goods and have symmetricals made to suit the exigencies of her case. These artistic accessories of feminine fictitiousness are leggings or tights woven in such a manner the thickness of a deficient thigh, the pipe-stem character of a calf, are filled out with silk and cotton into shapefulness and beauty that Venus de Medici herself would not be ashamed to make a display of. I heard a story about an operatic artist who for a long time refused to play parts demanding the exhibition even of a fraction of a limb, and all because her lower members were too attenuated to attract anything else but ridicule. Lately she has found her way to the pad-maker's and now can present as pretty an ankle and as round a calf to the audience as sister artists who have more flesh and blood in their composition. Men as well as women patronize the pad-maker and any actor of the mashing persuasion who may have had to keep his bandy legs in wide pantaloons heretofore can now burst forth upon the sight of his adored in all the gorgeous loveliness and perfection of an attractive anatomy.

MARIE ROZE.

CHAPTER VIII.
WITHIN THE WINGS.

IN THE GREEN ROOM.

The green-room, except where stock companies prevail—and there are not more than three or four in the United States now—has passed out of the shadow of the rigorous rules that sometime ago were posted here, and that had to be observed. By this I do not mean that rules have been entirely done away with behind the scenes; but travelling companies are governed by their own rules, carry their own stage manager, prompter, etc., and the only persons that local green-room rules could apply to now-a-days would be the four or five poorly paid young girls who, in their desire to go on the stage and become stars, start and generally stay at the bottom of the ladder, where they are paid pitiful salaries and continue to "mash" wandering minstrels, or the equally poorly paid and badly treated members of some male chorus. These girls usually spend the lengthy leisure a performance gives them sitting demurely on chairs in the corner of the green-room until the call-boy sends them word that they are needed to fill up some silent gap in the entertainment. Beyond these there are few to be found in the green-room during a performance. Occasionally an actor will drop in to pace the floor as he mumbles his lines over, or an actress, who is tired from standing in the wings, or on the stage, will hurry in and drop to rest on the sofa. The side scenes, or "wings," as they are termed, are the places in which to find almost everybody who has any business around the stage of a theatre. Under the stage, in a "music-room," the musicians may be found when they are not harassing the audience with some unanimously discordant air.

A GREEN-ROOM TABLEAU.

GETTING THEIR "LINES."

Gathered together in the entrances and within easy call of the prompter, whose business it has recently become to mind everybody else's business, are the performers, male and female mingling together, waiting for their cue to go on. The absence of chairs makes it necessary for all to remain on their feet, and only when a friendly "property" that may be used for sedentary purposes is within reach will a weary actor or actress take possession of it. Enough has been said already about the general aspect of affairs behind the scenes and the groupings in the green-room. Now, let us turn our attention to some of the individuals and incidents of this remarkable little world. The stage prompter is, probably, as important a gentleman as we could first run against. The prompter stands at his desk at one side of the stage, with a book of the play before him during the entire performance. It is his business to furnish the players with their lines when memory fails them. He must be quick to give the performer the exact word that has thrown him off the track, and just as soon as an actor or actress looks appealingly towards him he knows what it means—that the performer is "stuck"—and he must run to their aid at once. His position is almost as responsible as that of the prompter in the Japanese theatre, who goes from one actor to the other, during the whole performance, and, with a lantern placed up against the play-book, reads off the lines which the actor is expected to repeat. He must be at the theatre during the morning rehearsals; and he also writes out parts; changes of scenes; makes lists of the properties or articles needed; and altogether, his position is nothing like a sinecure. A rule of the theatre, that in many places, has glided quietly out of existence, is to the effect that nobody must lounge in the prompter's corner. But they do. Many a fairy queen, with shining raiment and powerful wand, loiters around to catch a glimpse of the few lines she has to speak, while darling little princes in the nicest of tights, or pirates, or bandits, with symmetrical limbs fully displayed, and the softest of hearts beating under their corsets, get alongside of him, and because they have had little parts to memorize, and have let them slip lightly and swiftly beyond their recollection, tease the prompter to help them regain the lost words.

MILTON NOBLES.

A veteran prompter, who has evidently seen a great deal of the world beyond the foot-lights, in giving his reminiscences, said—"Some actors boast that they never stick. No matter if they have totally forgotten their lines, they 'say something,' as they phrase it, and I have never seen the difference noted by the audience yet. Once, while I was making the rounds of the Pacific coast, twenty years or so ago, I went to see a performance of 'Macbeth,' by the company of a friend of mine in San Francisco. It was a tough company, a band of regulation old-time barn stormers, and the fellow who played Macbeth was so far gone in the dreamy vacancy of whiskey that he 'gagged' his part more than once in the first scene. Finally, in the middle of his second, he was also dead lost. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he threw his arms around Lady Macbeth's waist, and drawing her to him, coolly said: 'Let us retire, dearest chuck, and con this matter over in a more sequestered spot, far from the busy haunts of men. Here the walls and doors are spies, and our every word is echoed far and near. Come, then, let's away! False heart must hide, you know, what false heart dare not show.' They made their exit in a roar of applause, and I thought, 'There's a man who has no use for a prompter, sure enough.'

IMPROVING SPARE MOMENTS.

"All actors are not like him, however. Raw actors are the prompter's horror. The debutante is another. She will forget every line the moment she strikes the stage, and be so nervous, moreover, that she will not be able to repeat those the prompter reads to her. I remember one young lady who thought she had a mission to play Juliet. She made her appearance, supported by a country company, and lost every line, as usual. We prompted her through her first scene, somehow. When the balcony scene was on, her mother stood on the ladder behind her, reading her speeches word for word, which she repeated after her. But the old lady was a heavy weight, and the step-ladder was no longer in the flower of youth; so, in the middle of the farewell, it gave way. The old lady was tumbled forward against the ricketty staging of the balcony, and it fell against the set piece that masked it in from the audience. So Juliet, mother, balcony, and all toppled down on Romeo, and by the time he was taken from the wreck he was as mournful a lover as the play makes him out to be."

AN ACTRESS' USEFUL HUSBAND.

Looking around among the players again we find a fairy leaning up against some object with her lithe limbs crossed, and she putting in the spare time allowed her in doing crochet or some kindred work. Perhaps she is knitting a purse for some distant lover, or maybe it is a tiny pair of socks for the little baby that is waiting for her at home. For many of these youthful, charming, and heart-breaking fairies and fair burlesquers are married, and frequently their husbands are in the same company. A story is told of a well-known and popular actress who brings her husband with her to the theatre every night, and while the old man—a dear, innocent and uncomplaining old fellow sits in the side scenes nursing baby with a bottle, on one knee, and holding an English pug on the other, while the mother is out before the admiring public throwing her arms about some strange Romeo, and clinging to him with all the warmth and affection of the fair Juliet's young love.

MAKING LOVE IN THE SIDE-SCENES.

The story is told of a New York fireman, who made real love, and too much of it, on the stage. According to the rules of the fire department there, a member of the department is kept on duty at every performance in the theatres. While there he has nothing to do except respond to any call of fire, and give his valuable services in suppressing it. But it is very seldom that his services are called into requisition, and consequently the position at the theatre is much sought after by the gallant fire laddies. As a rule, the members of the department are a fine body of men, but those detailed at the theatres are very fine-looking and consequently very popular with the actresses at the theatres. The natural result is that the fireman soon has a "mash," and having unrestricted liberties perambulates through the building without hindrance. Becoming well acquainted with the nooks and corners he is enabled to snatch a few moments' sweet converse with the object of his affections, and in a place where they can commune with one another uninfluenced by the presence of anyone. But recently the regular disappearance of the fireman of a certain theatre at a stated time became the subject of comment among the attaches, and another female admirer of the gallant fireman, actuated possibly by jealous motives, watched him receding from view and followed his footsteps silently. In an unfrequented nook among the ruins of ancient mountains, pillars and broad fields—on canvas—stood the object of her disappointed affections, embracing the fair form of her rival and giving vent to the pent-up feelings of his heart, while she, coy, and dove-like, stood, blushingly receiving the compliments which were being showered upon her. This was too much for the slighted fair one, and the place that knew the loving hearts for many evenings is now vacant and ready for the occupancy of another loving couple.

Another fire lad of the same department thought he smelt fire one night just before the performance began. He pried around through every nook and corner in the fulfilment of his duty, and at last was satisfied that he had found the place. He was not sufficiently well posted to know that he had located the incipient blaze in one of the ladies' dressing-rooms. So in he popped without giving any warning. The girls were dressing for the ballet and already one of them was in condition to get into her symmetricals. Imagine the consternation of the girls at sight of the apparition in blue clothes, cap, and brass buttons. They hastily got behind towels and other articles within reach and set up a screech that came near creating a panic among the audience. The fire boy did not wait to find the origin of the smoke, and it took all the persuasive powers of the manager and company to keep the girls from swearing out warrants for burglary or something of that kind against the luckless laddie.

M'LLE GERALDINE AND LITTLE GERRY.

There are a great many other ludicrous things that have happened behind the scenes, and but few of which have reached the public. The legend about Atkins Lawrence's lion skin, which he wears when he plays Ingomar, and which was so heavily sprinkled with snuff as a preservative against moths that when Parthenia began to woo the barbarian chief and leant lovingly upon his shoulder she almost sneezed her head off before the alarmed audience, is told of Mary Anderson. The Milwaukee Sun printed something about the same actress, that whether true or false is equally good. The writer says:—"It is well known that Miss Anderson is addicted to the gum-chewing habit, and that when she goes upon the stage she sticks her chew of gum on an old castle painted on the scenery. There was a wicked young man playing a minor part in the play who had been treated scornfully by Mary, as he thought, and he had been heard to say he would make her sick. He did. He took her chew of gum and spread it out so it was as thin as paper, then placed a chew of tobacco inside, neatly wrapped it up, and stuck it back on the old castle. Mary came off, when the curtain went down, and going up to the castle she bit like a bass. Putting the gum, which she had no idea was loaded, into her mouth, she mashed it between her ivories and rolled it as a sweet morsel under her tongue. It is said by those who happened to be behind the scenes, that when the tobacco began to get in its work there was the worst transformation scene that ever appeared on the stage. The air, one supe said, seemed to be full of fine cut tobacco and spruce gum, and Mary stood there and leaned against a painted rock, a picture of homesickness. She was pale about the gills, and trembled like an aspen leaf shaken by the wind. She was calm as a summer's morning, and while concealment like a worm in an apple, gnawed at her stomach, and tore her corset strings, she did not upbraid the wretch who had smuggled the vile pill into her countenance. All she said, as she turned her pale face to the painted ivy on the rock, and grasped a painted mantel piece with her left hand, as her right hand rested on her heaving stomach, was, 'I die by the hand of an assassin.' Women can't be too careful where they put their gum."

SOBERING A COMEDIAN.

Actors are not fonder of or indulge more in liquor than any other class. Occasionally you will find a member of the profession whose passion for the ardent will lead him far enough to disappoint the public. Joe Emmet's indiscretions in this direction gave him world-wide notoriety, and for this reason only do I mention them here. He is a favorite everywhere and for that reason the entire public regretted his one fault among so many agreeable virtues. But Joe has occasioned many comical situations in the side scenes while actors and manager were plying him with seltzer, bromide of potassium and other soberatives in order to get him to begin or finish a play, when there was a jammed house waiting to applaud him at every turn in "Fritz." But Emmet has crossed the Rubicon again and once more his worldful of friends rejoice in his happiness and growing fortune. He is not the only one in the profession who has been addicted to the cup that cheers and inebriates at the same time. I have heard that a pretty and popular soubrette must have her glass of brandy between the acts, and that an actor already at the top of the ladder is succumbing to the seductive and rosy liquid. Still liquor has not made nearly the number of victims in the ranks of the theatrical class that it has in other professions, and it is only alluded to here to illustrate a comical incident that once occurred during the engagement of a burlesque combination in Kansas City. It was not known until six o'clock at night that the comedian of the comedy was in a sad state of intoxication somewhere through the town. Parties were sent out at once to look him up. They did not succeed in finding him until 7:30 when they hurried him to the theatre. It was a terrible job to get him into his stage-clothes and to keep his head steady and his eyes open long enough to allow his friends to make him up for his part. By the time this had been done the impatient audience shouted and whistled and stamped so violently that at last the manager was obliged to ring the curtain up. Mr. Comedian was in the wings reluctantly accepting the remedies provided by his friends, while they waited for his cue to go on. He was fairly sober when he reached the presence of the audience and although he betrayed his condition slightly, few in the house knew enough about the trouble that had been taken with him in order that the manager might keep his word with the public. It is needless to add that Mr. Comedian was very sorry, and sick when he got sober.

M'CULLOUGH AS "VIRGINIUS."

CHAPTER IX.
STAGE CHARMS AND OMENS.

The night the Southern Hotel burned down in St. Louis, I was standing at the ladies' entrance when Kate Claxton, whose presence is now always regarded in a city as ominous of a conflagration, came down through the fire and smoke in her night dress and was hurried across the street and out of danger by a gentleman who lent her his overcoat while she made her way to another hotel. There were seventeen lives lost that terrible night, and a young and beautiful actress—Frankie McLellan—in a frantic effort to escape the flames, jumped from a three story window and had her face marked for life by the fall. Just as soon as people got over the horror of the first news of the catastrophe, gossip turned to theorizing and from that diversant stories were told concerning the prominent people who figured in the calamity. Then it became known that Milton Nobles had lost a brand new pair of lavender trousers, in the pockets of which were several hundred dollars that "The Phœnix" had brought him that same evening. Then too, the narrow escape of Rose Osborne, of the Olympic stock company, was recited; but prominent above all, Miss Kate Claxton's presence in the hotel was dwelt upon, and, as she had already fairly earned the unanimous reputation that has since followed her, her name became part of the history of the conflagration, as it has been associated with every conflagration that occurred in her vicinage since. She is rather ungallantly and untruly styled the "Fire Fiend," and all sorts of predictions are made about the theatre she plays in, the hotel she has her rooms at, and the very town and county in which she is temporarily domiciled. But Kate Claxton, who by the way is Mrs. Stevenson, is not the first person in her profession to have acquired such an unenviable reputation. Thomas S. Hamblin, an actor and manager of the early half of the present century, who came from England in 1825 to star in "Shakespeare," was followed by fire even more relentlessly than Miss Claxton has been. No less than four theatres burned under his management, and it was generally said when he undertook to open or run a place of amusement that from that moment it was fated to the flames. Hamblin figures conspicuously in the history of the Bowery. He died in 1854.

KATE CLAXTON.

The sailor who braves the dangers of the deep is always blindly superstitious. There is something in the vastness of the ocean, in its misty immensity, in its magic mirage, its wonders and its terrors, that puzzles the mind and sets fire to the imagination of poor Jack, and even bewilders his superior officers. The artist who undertakes to sail before the public and to amuse it for a living is quite as much at sea as your genuine Jack Tar. He or she finds himself or herself on a veritable ocean, beset by dangers, surrounded by unknown and fickle conditions of atmosphere and phenomena. All the logic of the dry land is of no avail in such a situation. The relations of cause and effect are broken up. Magic is the only excuse for the arrival of the unexpected. The seemingly impossible in results is always the most possible. Once embarked in the dramatic sea, no one can tell where the voyage may end, or what it may bring forth. A shipwreck on auriferous rocks may prove a success.

Triumph may come from ruin; happiness from danger, and the longest voyage and the richest freight are often given the most leaky and shallow craft. There is no knowing which boat will float the longest on the dramatic sea—the best equipped or the most shaky and flimsy. So it is no wonder that actors are all superstitious. They have no compass even to guide them when beset by the varying winds of public opinion. The impossible is always sure to meet them; so they are always on the lookout for magic, and depend in secret quite as much upon their simple necromancy as upon their talent or their study. Every star has, so to speak, a fetich that insures success, or goes through an imaginary formula to invoke prosperity. The public is constantly under the influence of the voudoo arts of actors, and incantations and mystic signs rule the world of Thespis and enslave the public without its knowledge. Some of these fancies and formulæ of intelligent actors are, indeed, more simple and childlike than those that characterize poor Jack of the briny deep.

Imagine, for instance, an actor like John McCullough refusing to approach a theatre except by one route (the one he first takes, no matter how roundabout) from night to night, for fear of breaking the charm of success. Imagine, too, a lot of other trifling things that beset him—signs, omens and the like. If he stumbles when he first enters a scene it is a sign of good luck. If he receives faint applause in the first scene he is sure to succeed, amid thunderous plaudits, in the last; if Forrest's sword, used in the Gladiator, becomes dim by damp air or other cause, it is a sign of lack of fervor in the audience of the evening, while, on the contrary an extraordinary brightness of the weapon is a sure sign of great success. If a negro should cross his path while he is on his way to a performance, that is a never-failing omen of a prosperous engagement, while to encounter a cross-eyed woman (not a man, for strabismus in that sort of creature does not affect John, probably because it is only the woman he looks at), is a sure sign if not of failure, at least of annoyance to himself and coldness on the part of his audience. The Macbeth music is, of course, his great bugbear, as it is with all actors.

THE LATE VENIE CLANCIE.

No success could attend any of his performances if any one were to hum or whistle the witches' chorus in the wings or the dressing-rooms. Any poor, inexperienced devil who might try it would find John, and, in fact, all the company, wrestling with him, and himself lying in the gutter at the back door before he had warbled through two bars of the fatal music. This is, in the opinion of every actor, a sure invocation of disaster. Under the malign influence of this melodic devilishness either the theatre will be burned down (for, if we are to believe the actors and stage tradition, every theatre that was ever burned in this country was put under the spell of fire by some singer or whistler of the witches' chorus), or salaries will not be paid, or the manager will bring his season to an early and disastrous end. Something ill is sure to happen if the Macbeth music is heard, and John shares that belief in common with even the humblest Roman of them all who parades his scraggy shanks nightly in ridiculous contrast with the heroic legs of the tragedian.

John T. Raymond, while believing faithfully in all the regular signs and omens of the stage, has his own special claims to "hog 'em," using the stage vernacular. He has only one suit of clothes for Colonel Sellers, and would not have any other under any circumstances. It would change his luck from good to bad.

"Remark," he says, "there never was a success continued where a play was entirely re-costumed. The public interest began to flag always in some mysterious way from the time the new dresses came on. It is the old story of old wine in new bottles. The wine will burst the bottles. There's going to be no burst with my wine. I stick to my old clothes as long as they will stick to me."

CATHERINE LEWIS.

He has also a lucky $5 gold piece, which he always carries in his vest pocket on the stage, whatever part he is playing, and when he is nervous and fearful of lack of appreciation he has only to rub his magic coin to make everything lovely. In getting out of bed he will not slip out with the left foot first, lest he may have bad luck all the day. His dreams decide his acceptance of a play, and when he is puzzled between two methods of working up a "point," he is perfectly satisfied to settle it by the toss up of a cent.

Joe Jefferson is also impressed with the magical potency of old clothes. He has never changed his first "Rip Van Winkle" suit, but he has been forced to have it patched and renovated. His hat, wig, beard and "trick" rifle—the one that falls to pieces after his long sleep—are the same that he used when he made his great success in the part in London fifteen years ago. He mislaid this gun last season, just before he played at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and was forced to get another. That engagement was his first failure, and a bad one. He has found the old rifle, and, the charm being now complete again, he has opened the season with a very successful week in Brooklyn. Joe would break an engagement in any theatre if a dog were to walk across the stage at the first rehearsal. That is a sure sign of death, loss, or fire, as every actor knows. A cat parading the coulisses or walking with dainty tread across the scene, however (even at an evening performance), would be hailed by him and colleagues with delight as an unfailing sign of prosperity, health and renown.

Sothern felt that he was sure to fail with his audience if his valet, by an accident, handed him his wig before his coat was on, while, if he put it on his head at the last moment, and not before the voices of the call-boy was heard summoning all on for his first scene, he had "got 'em dead to rights."

Florence, like Raymond, carries a lucky $5 gold piece, and believes the charm of his popularity reposes in the fact that he always puts on his costumes in a never-varying order, and never changes his old brushes and articles of "make-up." He, too, is afraid of the necromantic powers of the evil-omened dog, and believes in the magic spells of fairy grimalkin. If the orchestra plays a waltz between the first and second acts of his piece, success is more likely than ever to seal his efforts of the evening.

Mrs. Florence, on the contrary, does not believe in old clothes, but quite the reverse. She thinks, however, that birds (canaries, or any other variety) are sure to bring bad luck, and will not play in the company where there is a cross-eyed girl. The cross-eyed man doesn't count. If the prompter should tear a page of manuscript accidentally, or, moreover, if the page should contain the name or a speech of the character she is acting, there is no use in hoping for a great furor that evening, for there will be nothing but disappointments in the making of points and contretemps in the management of the stage. If the prompter turns out the foot-lights or a row of border-lights, swift disaster is sure to come on the theatre. This was never known to fail in her experience.

Booth will never go on the stage, no matter how late or hurried he may be, without first pacing three time across the green-room, mumbling over not the first, but the very last speech of the piece he is to play that night. Then he walks on, sure of his triumph. If he should fail in his formula, the audience would be cold and unappreciative. It has been his custom to have Desdemona's couch set in the second entrance on the stage, left in the last scene of "Othello." According to the old style, the couch should be set in the centre door, behind curtains, exactly in front of the audience. Booth believes in signs, however, and should he consent to have Desdemona slumber in any other place than U. E. L. he would lose his charm in the character of Iago.

CHANFRAU.

Frank Chanfrau believes in the efficacy of old clothes. He has only one suit in Kit, and his success is unvarying in that piece. He hates dogs on the stage, believes in cats, knows birds are bad luck, is convinced that a house decorated in a prevailing hue of decided blue is sure of ill-fortune, and shudders at the mere mention of the Macbeth music. He has steered clear of all these evil influences during his stage career, and has been uniformly successful.

Oliver Doud Byron has a special claim in addition to the regular superstitions of his class. He has a certain tattoo mark of India ink on his right forearm. When he rolls up his sleeves for his "terrible combat" in the last act of "Across the Continent," he must uncover that mark without looking at it, or his fetich is not complete, and the charm of his prosperity will be broken.

Charles Thorne believes his success lies in the fact that he always steps on the stage in the first scene with his right foot foremost, and keeps it in advance until he has delivered his first speech. This done, he is safe and sure of a "walk over" before his critics. Once or twice he has inadvertently stepped out with his left, and on these occasions he has failed, or the piece has fallen flat. Such an accident happened him on the first night of "Lost Children." Manager Palmer, of the Union Square, who has also become a victim of stage superstitions, is fearful of Thorne stepping out with his terrible left foot on a first night, just out of retaliation for some slight or disagreement. Thorne, possessing this magic power for good or evil, not at his fingers' ends, but at the ends of his toes, is a terror to the establishment, and on first nights is treated with distinguished consideration by the entire company. No one gets in his way when he is about to make his stage entrance on a first night, lest he may be thrown out of step and advance with sinister effect upon the scene. Thorne's right foot once put forward, every one breathes freer and plays with greater vim. The critical point of every new play, therefore, lies, though the critics may not think it, in the malign or favorable magic of Thorne's feet, according as he puts them forward.

Adelaide Neilson was as superstitious as all actresses are. Her evenly-balanced beauty and brains did not free her from the slavery of omens. She carried about with her, ever since her first London success in Juliet, a lucky silken rag—a dingy, straw-colored drapery—which she insisted upon hanging over the railing of the balcony when Juliet breathes her complaints to the moon. Without this, the fair Adelaide was sure she could not succeed in the scene in any part of the world. She brought the silken rag across the water with her again and again. The drapery was somewhat faded and tattered from long service in the two worlds, but she still clung fondly to it, and said it was possessed of all its olden magic.

Lotta sleeps three hours by daylight, but if she should wake up ten minutes before the usual time (just the time to rush to the theatre) the fates are against her, and she will not do well that evening. If any one whistles in a dressing-room within her hearing while she is donning her costume, she is sure the person is "whistling away her luck," and the house is going to be bad.

Fanny Davenport would not, for any consideration, miss rearranging her wig before the green-room mirror just previous to going on the stage. She has a regular, unvarying formula to go through to guarantee success. She first presses her hands to the sides of her head to be sure the springs are firmly fixed (although she has just had her dresser make that sure in her dressing-room), then gives the "bang" three smart tugs, puffs up the frizzes with a nervous twitch of her fingers, presses the entire wig down from the top of her head, gives her silken trail a final kick to induce it to unfold itself, and then rushes pell mell to the stage in answer to the alarming cry of "stage waiting." Without this formality she would not be herself the whole evening.

FANNY DAVENPORT.

Clara Morris believes in the efficacy of a small medicine vial, which she carries (empty) through every scene, she says, through habit, though it is fair to presume, through superstition. Without the vial she could not get along.

Neilson also had a vial—a special one—which she insisted should only be used for Romeo's poison potion. She would handle no other, and has been known to have the bill changed because the vial was mislaid, and would not allow "Romeo and Juliet" to be put up for performance until it was found.

Frank Mayo thinks his magic lies in an old fur cap and a hare's foot, for rouging, which he had ever since he has been on the stage.

DION BOUCICAULT.

Boucicault trembles and is sure of failure for any one of his pieces which is greeted with commendation by all the actors without a dissenting voice. If the players condemn his piece at the rehearsals, he is sure the audience will like it. But in any event no play of his can be a success unless he tears off the cover to the first act, and makes away with the title page at the last rehearsal.

Maude Granger has a certain magic smelling-bottle which she puts to her nostrils just before going on the stage.

Maggie Mitchell attributes her success in "Fanchon" to an old pair of shoes which she wears in that piece.

Eliza Weathersby hates birds, doesn't like whistlers, and has for her special charm an embroidered rose, which always appears on her dress or tights, according to the style of part she may be playing.

Paola-Marie, the little Parisienne of Grau's opera bouffe, has a pet pug dog which she always fondles at the side-scenes for luck, before going on the stage. This, too, to the intense horror of the rest of the company, who think dogs in theatres bad luck.