The Portland daily press., 1881-01-01

and singed my face dreadfully as the heroic
fireman going to the rescue. We had more
railway accidents. powdered coachmen, live
supernumeraries, and real water in that
piece than in any piece that was ever
put on the London boards; and what did the
the Daily Irritator say about it. Meenie,
ask you that2 Eh?"
They said," Meenie answered regretful-
ly, that the play lacked incident, and that
the dullness of its general mediocrity was
scarcely relieved by few occasional episodes
which hardly deserved the epithet of sensa-
tional."
well, then we went in for aesthetics and
high art, and brought out Theophrastus
Massinger Villon Snooks's 'Ninon de Pm
clos We draped the auditorium in sage
green hangings, decorated the proscenium
with peacock patterns by Whistler, got Al
ma-Tadema to design the costumes for the
classical mask, and Millais to supply us with
hints on Renaissance properties, and finally
half ruined ourselves over the architecture
OF that chateau with the unpronounceable
name that everybody laughed at. You got
yourself up so that your own mother would
not have known you from Ellen Terry, and
l made my legs look as thin as spindles, so
that exactly resembled an eminent trage
dian i'll the character of Hamlet; and what
came of it all? What did the Evening Stin-
ger remark about the play, l should like to
know?"
''They observed" said Meenie, in tone
OF settled gloom, ''that the decorations were
washy and tasteless; that the piece itself
was insipid and weakly rendered, and that
no amount of compression or silk leggins
wonld ever reduce your calves to truly
tragic diameter
Exactly so," said the respondent mana
ger. "And then we went in for scenic spec
tacle. We produced The Wide World: a
Panorama in Five Tableaus.' We laid our
first act in Europe, our second in Asia, our
third in Africa, our fourth in America and
our fifth in the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
We hired five full grown elephants from
Wombwelps Menagerie, and procured living
cOcOa-nut palms at enormous expense from
the Royal Gardens, Kew. We got three
real Indian princes to appear on the stage in
their ancestral paste diamonds; and we hired
Farini's Zulus to perform their complete
toilet before the eyes of the spectators, as
an elevating moral illustration of the man
ners and customs of the South Sea Islanders
We had views, taken on the spot, of Eng
lands latest acquisition, the Rock of Rara-
tonga. Finally, we wrecked this steamer
here in collision with Russian iron-clad,
supposed to be symbolical of the frightful
results of Mr.. Gladstone s or Lord Beacons-
hCi0 AOlCiSu pOlICy- LII buIc i lOISOb
which-and what was the consequence?
Why, the gods wanted to sing the national
anthem. and the stalls put ON their squash
hats aud left the theatre in a fit of the
sulks.''
"The fact ISL said Meenie, "Euglish
plays and E0glish actors are at discount
People are tired of them. They don't care
for sensation any longer, nor for aesthetics,
nor for spectacle; upon my word, their taste
has become so debased and degraded that l
don't believe they even care for legs. The
whole worlds gone mad on foreign actors
and actresses. They've got Sarah Bernhardt
with ecstasies over her, as if couldn't make
myself just as thin by a judicious course Of
DR.. Tanner"
"No, you couldn't" said Jack, looking at
her plump little face with a molnentary re-
taxation of his brow. "Your fresh little
Irish cheeks could never fall away to Sarah's
pattern" And to say the truth Meenie was
comely little body enough, with just as
much tendency to adipose deposit as at one
and-twenty makes face look temptingly
like peach. She blushed visibly through
her powder, which shows that she had no
more of it than the custom of the stage i'm
peratively demands, and went on with her
parable unrestrained.
"Then there are the Yankees, with the
'Danites' aud Colonel Sellers, talking TRACE
dy through their noses, and applauded to the
echo by people who would turn up their
own at them in a transporting melOdrama.
But that's the way of English people now,
just because they're imported direct. That
comes of free trade you know. For my part
Pm a decided protectionist. I'd put a pro-
hibitory tariff upon the importation of for
eign live stock. orcompel them to be slaught-
cred at the port of entry. That's what I'd
do"
Jack merely sighed.
swell, then, there are the Dutch, again,
going through their performances like wood
en- dolls, Exquisite self-restraint,' the news
papers say. Exquisite fiddlesticks! Do you
suppose ,ve couldn't restrain ourselves if we
chose to walk through Hamlet like mutes
at funeral? Do you suppose ace couldn't
show suppressed feeling if we acted Mac
beth in a couple of easy chairs? Stuff and
nonsense, all of it. People go because they
want other people to think they understand
Dutch, which they don't, and understand
acting, which they can't see there. If we
want to get on we must go in for being Nor
wegians, or Russians, orSandwich Islanders,
or something of that sort; we really must"
Jack looked up slowly and meditatively.
"Look here, Meenie," he said seriously:
''suppose we get up a Chinese play"
"Why, Jack, we're not Cinnamon and
Chinawomen. We don't look in the least
like it.''
81 don't know about that" said Jack
quietly; 'syour eyes are not quite the thing
perhaps, but your nuse is fairly well up to
pattern"
'Now, Sir" said Meenie, pouting, and
turning up the somewhat retrousse feature
in question, 'you're getting rude. My nose
10 inf p,x{
you could never make yours into China
mans. It's at least three inches too long,
"Well, you know, Meenie, there's man
who advertises nose machine for pushing
the cartilage, or whatever you call it, into a
proper shape. Suppose we get this fellow to
make us nose-machines for distorting it into
a Chinese pattern. You'll do well enough
as you stand, with little walnut-juice, all
except the eyes; but your warmest admirer
couldn't pretend that your eyes are oblique.
We must find out some dodge to manage
that, and then we shall be all right. We can
easily hire few real Cinnamon as supernu-
meraries-engage Tom Fat, or get 'em over
from New York, or San Francisco, or some
where; and as for the leading characters, no
body II ever expect them to be very Chinese
looking. Upon my word, the idea has points
about it. Pll turn it over in my mind and
see what we can make of it. We may start
afresh next season, after ALL"
The next six or eight weeks were period
of prodigious exertion on the part of Jack
Roberts. At first the notion was mere
joke; but the more he looked at it, the better
he liked it. An eminent distorter of the hu-
man countenance not only showed him how
to twist his nose into Mongoloid breadth and
flatness, but also invented an invisible eyelid
for producing the genuine Turanian almond
effect and rose with success to the further
flight of cumming on pair of undiscover-
able high cheek-bones. In a few days, the
whole company were SO transformed that
their own prompter wouldn't have known
them, some allowance in the matter of noses
and cheek-bones being naturally made in the
case of the leading ladies, though all alike
underwent a judicious course of copious
walnut-juice. Jack telegraphed wildly to all
parts of the globe for stray Cinnamon, and
when at last he picked up half dozen from
vessels in the Thames, it was unanimously
decided that they looked far less genuinely
celestial than the European members of the
company. As for the play, Jack settled that
very easily "We shall rive them Gooroe