The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-08-08
Dear Hal.
Aug. 6.

Dear Hal:
had a curiosity to see what a two
bit Mephistopheles looked like the other
night, and I presented my card at the
Lvceum. To offset the effects of the
weather just now, they are offering free
entrance buns and lemonade TO ladies
ACCOMPANIED by an escort. who must,
OF course. pay, since the audience was
pretty evenly made up of pairs; that is
what there was OF it. It was the most
dispiriting sort of an audience that it
ever fell TO my lot to mingle with. and
my sympathy for the actors was mixed
with wonderment at their being able to
play 1t all. The wilderness of empty
chairs created q sort OF vacuum in the
auditorium that was literally appalling.
The cheap theater is a product CT
hard times. just as the tramp is, the
railway receiver and the neighborh0Od
telephone. 1 haven't the least doubt
that the time was. not so very far back,
when all these Hosmer people COM
manded places in pTetentious companies
at salaries which doubtless ranged from
$25 to SIS a week, perhaps more. It was
simply astonishing to see the ability
scattered through that company when
one stopped TO consider that % and 10
cents were the ruling prices. and that
the nightly receipts could not amount
to a figure that would yield the players
more than the price OF their meals.
lodging and grease paint. / INDUCED
in some mental calculations as the
lonesome pianist lost himself in fine
frenzy OF semi-demi-semi quaver. They
were probably 100 people in the house
all told; deduct 20 dead heads, like my
self, deduct 80 more for ladies with es-
III org
Saw 30 of them a 20 cents. and 70 at
Is cents; total receipts, $1,000. Out of
thai had 10 be paid house rent. .i>a,s,
advertising. bill posting. the lone pian-
ist, the stage hands, the dOorkeeper,
the ushers, the ticket sellers. and what
was left would be divided between the
unfortunate members Of the company.
How DO they do it? 1 confess myself
unable to tell. What the rule is with
the Hosmers, 1 know not. Usually it
results in the players hanging together
for two or three weeks, hoping against
hope for big night that will give them
at least a 1.-THE of the prodigious sum
that represents their back salaries;
then despair, the railroad ties. and emf
grafton 10 the next town. where there
is an Opening" and where precisely
the same experience is gone through
with.
mer was more fortunate in his demon
than in his Joseph Smith. Mephisto,' al
belt. played with a large round hole in
his flowing cape, probably from get
ting too close to the fire, was in spets
excellent. and all the more excellent
considering the mental anguish he must
have endured as he counted up the
house between his speeches. Faust and
Valentine were more than respectable:
Marguerite. though Of the weeping.
waiiing and crashing variety. was far
beyond her surroundings. The costum-
ing was good, barring an occasional
rent: the electric effects. for so small
stage, fine; the ''workingup' thoroughly
professional. And We got it all for %,
cents. ladies with escorts thrown in.
Verify the times are out of joint, and
with no one more than these brief and
abstract chroniclers of our times"
MARGE.