Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-26

/ remember, on the night of Mrs. Pot
ter's first opening here, seeing a good
looking young women, dressed in neat
but not gaudy style, comein just before the
curtain went up and walk quietly, amid
the thronging theater parties and evening
toilets, down to seat in the front row OF
the orchestra chairs. No one paid her
any observable attention, and / am the
only person ] ever heard speak of the oc-
currence.
Perhaps the taste of the young woman
in choosing such seat on such occasion is
open to criticism. Most action is open to
criticism from one point of view or an
other in this world, but certainly the au-
dience, the civilization, that takes such an
occurrence in that simple-mindedly cour-
teous spirit is most praiseworthy, and has
gotten far in the recognition of the hu-
manities. Perhaps the lady did well, after
all, to choose first night. | remember
now that / myself have noticed that /, in
my unprotected state, seemed even more a
matter-of-course person in first night au-
diences than in others. They are made up
of the most metropolitan class in the me-
tropolis-critics and people about town
WIZ Iuic tuS WOTiu lUO MUCH 10
keep their prejudices or their ignorances.
In this sense let me digress to say that |
believe New York is the most metropoli-
tan city in the world. London does pretty
well, but don't believe there is an audi
ence of carefully self-suppfessed swells in
London who would take a strange innova-
ton, a novel spectacle, an unheard-of piece
of conduct with the easy man-of- the-world
nonchalance that any class of New York
ers would show on any such occasion. And
as for Paris-why. they simply have fit
of asphyxiated curiosity there before your
eyes at the sight of anything that is not a
la Parisenne. If speak with feeling it is
because 1t is not a year since the audience
of the Theater Franchise fairly rose at me,
poor little insignificant me, in a stuffy box
clear at the back of the house, because, for
sooth, l got up and stood with my back
turned to the house during an entr acte.
You think that is lie, know. / should
not dare tell you personally, for l know
you'd go away and say-you'd be sure to If
you were woman-that / must have been
doing something that / did not tell. 1t
would be a base slander. | was behaving
with far more propriety than | am aecus-
toned to. l was chaperoned by married
woman, and man was in the party. You
can't do more than that, can YOU? And |
just got up and stood with my back to the
house to rest my eyes a minute, and some
how'll never know how or why-those
savages in the orchestra saw me, and began
to laugh and applaud and turn the atten-
tion of the whole house to that little box
precisely as if | had been standing on my
head on the edge l warn you that it is
untraditional at the Theater Franchise to
well, | don't know whether it was the
standing up or the turning round or what
| that upset them SO. Anywhere you are in
Paris it is not safe to do anything till you
have seen a Frenchwoman do it before you
| made up my mind that New York suits
me.
don't want to yote-neither do any Of
the other busy, happy, professional women
| | know-but | do want to be allowed life
| liberty and the pursuit of happiness as q
human being, and here is the place where
| am. A chapter might be written on the
way restaurants have modified their WAYS
about women within half dozen years.
The finest restaurants down town make
point now of catering to women alone
where it used to be an unheard-of thing tc
see woman unaccompanied by man.
Various foreign table dhotes of good
class will now give lone woman seat
and treat her with every consideration
although it is an astonishingly short time
since there was hardly a place of the sort
in New York where even party of women
were not looked upon with curious eyes
Neg York Star.