Mexico weekly ledger. (Mexico, Mo.) 1855-1956, 1886-03-11
NEW YORK GOSSIP.
Opera on a Successful Foot.
ing-Conntrymen in the City-Har-
ry HiIl's Always Catches Them
Elevated Railways, sc.

Nk" Aohh, waiCu os-AlteF many
utilc attempts, American Opera has
1t last been placed on a successful
ooting in this city. 1t is an indica-
ion of how real taste may be smoth-
sred at the demands of society, that
American Opera, now that it has
actually gained admission to the
charmed circle, commands more
patronage than ever Maurice Grau
With his French, Mapleson with his
Italian or any Of the multitudinous
managers of German opera have ever
There is something
fascinating in the thought that the
display of limbs in the ballet is made
up of genuine American bone and
nuscle-(ballet dancers legs are
nothing else.) Take the foreign
ballet girls for instance; il you are
lucky enough to get an introduction
behind the scenes and attempt a con-
yeu are answered in an
outlandish lingo that is just no talk
ing at all to your perception, and you
get the impression that they are
rather ON the automatic order-made
to dance and posture and all that,
but just sticks when the conductor
stops pulling the strings. But what
a warm, living, human reality is
when pretty girl trips up
and takes your hand with a Kentucky
grip and says, "Ah, lthere!" and
other good old Anglo-Saxon words
in pure unaccented English such as
you are accustomed to talk yourself.
There is nothing automatic about
this girl. She is something more
than mere pirouetting figure, and a
something that your heart warns to
as it never can to foreign whirligig.
1t is sorrowful fact, however, that
no American girl has yet acquired
such perfect command of her limbs
as to fill the place of premier danseuse
in the ballet. There must be material
capable of it though, and perhaps
when it is developed we will dispense
with that jaw.breaking French term
and call them plain primary dan
GERS" or first dancers" (Of course
the adjective is used to qualify the
term and not the girls. am brave,
but not to the extent of allowing that
sentence to 60 unexplained.) The
remainder of the opera ensemble is
of course of secondary Importance to
the average "uncultivated' opera
goer, but it is very pleasant to hear
the singing done in the same intelligi-
BILE language that ''ah, there" belongs
to.
There are shoals of countrymen in
town just now, laying in their spring
stock of goods, and they are constant
Iy on the look out for breakers. To
the average ceuntryman there is
nothing innocent in Gotham. He
distrusts an Alderman quite as deep
ly as he does the man who knew his
father when he was a boy and used
to play mumblepeg with him in
SeedvilIe. He will ask policeman
for his pedigree before he will con-
sent to go with hlm to the station
house-where be is sometimes invit.
ed. If you look at him in passing
he will return it with o s'I-know-you.
for-a-pick-pocket- -can't-come
it-over-me gaze that is very CALLING
to an habitual church-goer, and &
regular Sunday school scholar. He
crosses at Cortlandt street ferry anc
goes all the way up to Harlem before
he begins to inquire the way to the
city hall. Then every policeman il
the intervening eight miles is cross.
examined Cortlandt street ferry
and the city hall are SO close together
that they would drop over to see eacl
other every day if the corporation
laws permitted it. Harry Hills ant
McGlory's, etcetera, catch hin
though, and it is there he finds tn,
rock on which he founders-thougl
it is not the one he was on the look
out for. 1t is after he has seen thes'
places that the station houses solici
the honor of his company. But thu
station house is "a God-send to him
To the hummer it IS the gate to tn
Island and confinement; to the gran
ger it is the portal opening back t.
fresh air and scented woods and opel
fields, away from the unregenerate'
beings, every one of whom sought +
rob him. 1t is not these granger
from wayback who become the vic
TINS of the bunco men it is th
.ssmart' men from the rural town
who laugh at the grangers becaus
they are green and who come to th
city with pot of red paint and
brush, but who find their artistic Ia
ent at a discount before they e
home again.
The shrek of the elevated locomt
tive whistle no longer splits the ca
drum Of the late sleeper in the thir
stories of the houses along the roui
of the elevated road. The engineer
have long maintained system I
whistle signals tina, had nothing
do with the railway code The
were arranged for use between ii
engineer and his Sunday girl Or
combination meant, "ah, there; wi
be with you at Six" Another, al
, on to ven cut that horse car duo