The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-04-23
NYM CRINKLES LETTER
Colonel Carter of Gainesville
a Delightful Stage Study.
ANOTHER GOOD SOUTHERN PLAY.
Augustus Thomas Has SkilIfully Clothed
z. Hopkinson Smiths Story in Scenery
and Grease Paint-"The Foresters," tho
Circus and the Food Show
Especial Correspondence

Especial Correspondence
NEW YORK, March 3O-"Colonel Carte
of Gainesville" is one of those sketches O
southern character that every body ha
heard of and knows in some degree Ever
state in the Union concentrates its loca
peculiarities in individuals Colonel Can
ter is as distinctively Virginian as Joshu
Whitcomb was distinctively a New Hamu
shire man. And both men are known il
story and song and caricature to the coun
try. | have heard stories of kearnal Kear
| ter for the last twenty years, and here he i
at last in his delightful entirety.
Mr.. f. Hopkinsoa Smith got him upor
paper from observation. He had no inten
ton of making play of him. But so vo
racious is the stage for something new
that every brochure and sketch that fall.
from the press is caught up by the man
ager. Dramatic agents and job actors
carried this book on Broadway for months
trying to fiud somebody who would touch
1t with dramatic wand and make stage
! Colonel Sellers of it.
| 1t fell to clever man. Mr.. Augustus
| Thomas knows the southern type; he is by
nature deft shaper of material into the
atric cOgency. He took the mere outlines
which the book furnished and padded them
into dramatic form.
The result is the play at Palmer's the
alter, If indeed a sketch OF character idyl-
Ideally and humorously treated, without
situation or suspense, can be called play.
What the drama does is to place before
us delightful combination of personal
qualities that cannot fail to interest us.
These qualities are the distinctive ones
seen only in the rural and isolated neigh
borhoods of the south, that overbearing
American egoism, that intense patriotism
and shabby antique chivalry SO out of
keeping with the practical matter of act
age, and that patriarchal aristocracy of
sentiment that seems to be the outcome Of
the vassalage that grew up in the south.
To these must be added an enthusiasm
that always goes off half cooked and an
lnpecuniositv that never interferes with
the widest fancies.
such men in the south could never any
more than a woman, weigh material forces.
They hurled themselves against the north
in the war with a magnificent ardor, but
without any mathematics. They had a
sentiment, and they did not care to know
that numbers and resources were factors.
They fired the hearts with a fame of rhet-
oric that had no equal in the teeming cities
of New England, but they had no ex-
chequer These men reached Parnassus in
the person Of John Randolph, and stood on
the peaks of fanaticism in the person of
Toombs. But they also in the old DAYS of
the republic planted a dauntless patriot
ism on our quarter decks and carried the
flag around the world with fighting in
stantaneousness that made it respected.
Let US concede all that the war has done
for the country in eliminating and solidi-
flying. and still there remains sentiment
tai p los about the smoldering ruins of
its lost conditions. Minstrelsy went out
with slavery. The wild, sad strains of the
plantation crept over the world The
southern darky was the father of our folk
songs, and the old patriarchal home was
the romantic vestige of sleepy and pleas
ant feudalism
Colonel Carter" comes back to US like
one of Tom Thorpe's sketches-now, alasi
almost forgotten. 1t has the balmy tereben-
theme odor Of the southern pines. 1t takes
you out Of our acute conflict to drowsv
ideal, far away conditions, where the OIL
mansion seems to suggest Dolly Madison
and Lafayette, and there is smell of
wood fires clinging yet to the old walls, and
the mammies and pickaninnies furnish
fitting shadow of medi8valism. Some |
balsamic breath Of a vanished courtliness
in all this and suggestion of Colonial |
pride and simplicity and quaintness softly |
blended.
Such is the atmosphere of Colonel Car
ter" and it is a play of personal atmos- |
phere, not of events. The thinnest kind of |
a story meanders along like one of those |
streams in the south. tepid and |
sluggish, but it has banks of semitropical |
suggestIYenesS where the hooking bird |
sings and the oriole flashes a flaming wing.
Having said all this, the fact remains |
that Colonel Carter" is not play for the
populaCe. 1t is prerequisite that you take
some sentiment with you to the theater in
order to enjoy it. Your real popular piay
expects you 10 bring nothing with You but
your optic nerve and your girl 1t sup
plies OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES, fancy, poe
Try, spirituality, by means of restlessness
md paint pot and orchestra
Mr.. DAILY IS just now doing this with
lord Tennysons play Of re Foresters."
His argument i something like this: |
DO you doubt that TennysOn is a great
,oet-ask my scene painter; that The
fOresters' IS the greatest drama of the
lge has been proved by Sullivan's music
The people come TO see Mr.. Days produc-
ion; ergo there is intrinsic merit in alb
tract poetry"
OF course there is ideality and sentiment
nd beauty IN The Foresters" So there
S IN great many other things that will not
dapt themselves to the theater | have
ven found them in patent Office report,
'ut never tined TO arrange them into acts
neeer saw the Sermon On the Mount
arved IN marble, and | don't think it I
would be efiicacious presented that way. {
Whatever else Lord Tennyson may be he
) not poet who appeals 70 the democracy, ! {
nd somehow you can't keep the democ- |
acy out OF the theater any more than Won
an keep Mr.. Daily out OF Westminster
bbey if he goes on this way.
Colonel Carter" is the only novelty in
OWN. Mr.. Mansfield is playing under a :
ushel at the Garden theater. Whenever .
his brilliant actor resorts TO his repertory !
OH may know he is meditating a new !
lay. Merry Gotham, at the Lyceum, is
OF very merry and does not exactly fit the
reed OF the house. It's like a western
Iethodist in an eastern Episcopal pulpit
ramatic gossip concentrates itself on -
fair at the Madison Soua
arden, where Mrs. Kendall and Miss Cay
an are to be on exhibition. Price, fifty
.nts y
Barnum' circus has possession of the
arden al this moment, and keeps on sue
-Ssfully killing all public interest in the =
rcus by making quantity take the place
quality. II reminds me of the three
nged SUNDAY journalism which nobody
IN resd without q derrick A
MIR. Crane gives up the rather thin For
opsy," anC on the 2sca begins to do some
inc for credit. He calls il The Ameri- T
n Minister"