Weekly Trinity journal., 1867-05-25
Mark Twain ON the Black Crook

Mark Twain thus does up the q Black Crook -
and Cendrillon, u as they are now played in
New York:
The name of this new exhibition which
touches my missionary sensibilties, is the
Black Crook" The scene efects-the water
falls, cascades, fountains, oceans fairies devils,
bells, heavens and angels are gorgeous beyond
anything ever witnessed in America, perhaps,
and these things certainly attract the women and
girls. Then the endless ballets and splendid
tableaux, with seventy beauties arrayed in daz-
zling half-costumes, and displaying all possible
compromises between nakedness and decency,
capture the men and boys. The scenery and the
legs everything; the actors who do the talk
ing are the wretchedest sticks ON the boards.
But fairy scenes.they fascinate the boys Beau
tiful bare-legged girls hanging in flower baskets
others stretched in groups on great sea shells
others clustered around futed columns others
in all possible attitudes girls-nothing but a
wilderness of girls-stacked up, pile on pile,
away aloft to the dome of the theater, diminish
ing in size and clothing, till the last row, mere
children, dangle high from invisible ropes ar
rayed only in " "camesa.' The whole tableau
resplendent with columns and scrolls, and vast
ornamental work wrought in gold, silver and
brilliant colors-and lit up with gorgeous theat-
rical fires, and witnessed through a great gauzy
curtain that counterfeits soft silver mist. 1t is
the wonders of the Arabian Nights realized.
Those girls who dance in ballet, dress with a
meagreness that would make parasol blush,
and they prance around and expose themselves
in q way that is scandalous to me. Moreover,
they come trooping on the stage in platoons and
battalions, in most gorgeous attire, grant you,
but with more tights in view than anything else.
They change their clothes every fifteen minutes
for four hours, and their dresses become more
beautiful and rascally all the time.
CENDRILLoN."
But our Sallie Hickey late of San Francisco
discounts the Black Crook" She is playing
a nude fairy piece, also, and in the last uct she
makes lovely statue of herself, and stands
aloft before the audience, and dressed about like
Menken, only a little more so She looks very
beautiful-but heaven help her assistants She
has got about thirty padded, painted, slab-sded
lantern -jawed old hags with her who SO
mortal homely that nothing tastes good to them
and it almost gives one the collie to look at them
And to see those lank, blear-eyed, leatherly old
scaliwags come out and hop around in melan.
choly dance, with their cheap, ragged, nine-inct
dress-tails Tapping in the air-oh it's worth
going miles to see And when one of them fin
ishes her poor shindig and makes her wind-up
stamp in the orthodox way, with criminal at
tempt at grace, want to snatch double-bar-
relied shotgun and 60 after the whole tribe.
The q Black Crook ~ has lately been brought
out on the San Francisco boards, and notwith-
standing Judge Deadly gives an untavorable opn-
ion of it, the people will 60 and view the novel;
ties presented to their inspection.
PLAIN TALK.-We extract the following from
an article entitled Henry Ward Beecher's
Church," in recent number of the Atlantic
Wonthiy:-" There are some reasons for thinking
that the men and the organizations that have
had in charge the moral interests of the people
of fbe TTnjted States ha las ftv hay
not been quite equal to their trust What are
we to think of such results of New England cul-
ture as Douglas, Cass, Webster and many other
men of great ability, but strangely wanting in
moral power? What are we to think of the
great numbers of Southern Yankees who were,
and are, the bitterest foes of all that New Eng
land represents What are we to think of the
rings that seem nowadays to form themselves,
as it were, spontaneously in every great corpo-
ration? What of the club-houses that spring up
at every corner for the accommodation of hus-
bands and fathers who find more attractions in
wine, supper, and equivocal stories than in the
society of their wives and children? What are
we to think of the fact, that among the people
who afford to advertise at the rate of a dol
lar and half line are those who provide wo-
men with the means of killing their unborn chill
dren-a double crime, murder and suicide?
What are to think of the moral impotence of al
most all women to resist the tyranny of fashion
and the necessity that appears to rest upon them
to copy every disfguration invented by the har-
lots of Paris? What are we to think of the
want both of masculine and moral force in men
which makes them helpless against the extraya-
gance of their households, to support which they
do fifty years work in twenty, and then die ?
What are we to think of the fact that all the
creatures in the United States enjoy good health
except the human beings, who are nearly all
III o;j