The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-02-25
From Boston Letter to the Providence Press.
"ONLY A BALLET. GIRL'''
Something for Ealmagc TO Use m
HIS Next Sermon on the stage.

A sad incident happened at one of our
theatres last week. a young and beautiful
girl connected with the ballet corps died
suddenly of diptheria. Three nights pre-
viously she appeared on the stage full of
life, and in an apothcosis scene had per-
sonated an angel. The intelligence of her
death reached the theatre at night. Just
previous to the performance, and was it
strange that gloom was spread over all
With the fresh recollection of their de-
parted companion, and the strains of Han
drers beautiful air, CANCELS Ever Bright
and Fair" which accompanied the apoth-
costs, still ringing in their ears, all went to
their labors with heavy hearts How little
did the audience suspect that the laughter
and merry making on the stage that night
were hollow mockeries. In the throng who
participated in village dance, full of as
sumed jollity and levity, was a young man
whose inward grief was inconsolable, for
the girl was all the world to him. To COM
NIT her to the tomb was TO bury heart and
hope. To take part in this scene weeping
men and women had hastily sought to dry
their eyes and assume an air of gayety they
could not feel. How those forced bursts
of laughter must have wrung their sympa-
thetic hearts To make this sudden grief
all the more poignant, came the discovery
that the poor girls death had been hasten
ed BY poverty. She had not even sum-
moned physician. She could not pay for
one. She had managed to live and to aid
her mother on the scanty salary of six dol
lars week. She had borne the highest
moral character among hei companions,
and the circumstances of her melancholy
death and her enforced poverty told plainly
enough that she had chosen the paths of
| IMPOVERISHED virtue rather than those of
| gilded vice. Instead of turning her steps
with some male companion to those golden
palaces of sin, the midnight supper rooms,
from whose portals many young girl has
departed in shame, she wendell her way,
pinched with want and hunger, and poorly
clad, to her home in the suburbs, for she
could not afford to live in town. Some
times she had been compelled to walk
through cold and storm, and it was through
exposure in this way that she became i'll.
1t should be said to the credit of her as
sociates in the theatre that she was not
known to be actually ine want A feeling
of pride and self-dependence had prevent
ed her from making her privations known.
AS literally as the money to defray the ex-
penses of her funeral was subscribed by the
people in the theatre, ten-told more gem
erously would it have gone forth to have
relieved her suflerings. What common
tary the going out of this young lite fur
nishes uDon some of the attacks made up
on the stage and stage people. There are
black sheep in every flock, and the dramat-
ic profession contains enough of them,
heaven knows, but here was girl, who
withstood temptation and lived life of
spotless purity in the face of want, hunger
and privation. She was young and hand
some, and her society was much sought af
ter, but in vain, by the class of men who,
profiting by the teachings of Talmage and
the rest, imagine every girl upon the stage
susceptible to the arguments contained in a
purse full of money. She was 'only a
ballet girl" but she could starve on Sc "A
week rather than luxuriate on the wages of
sin. Talmage might gather up his gar
ments lest they become contaminated by
brushing against the dress of the stage
player, if she should chance to pass him
in the street, but the whole line of Chris
tian martyrdom affords no truer instance of
real heroism than this.