Evening star., 1900-10-13
IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS

''They don't call variety show the va
rieties any more. yet the variety show OF
today seems to me to be about the same
thing 1t was forty years or even half CEN
tury ago." remarked an up-to-date WASH
ington septuagenarian the other afternoon
after having attended a performance at one
Of the local stag houses. 'Of course, they
call these shows by different names now
adays but fail to see wherein they difrer
in any essential respect from the hodge,
podge shows that the boys of my day, back
in the 4Os and sos. used to attend. The
sidewalk conversationalists, Irish, Dutch
and negro. are the same chaps. so far as
their actions and methods of speaking are
concerned, as the sidewalk jokists that
heard right here in Washington. and occa-
sionally oyer in Baltimore and Philadelphia.
when Daniel Webster was still one of the
big men in this country and long before
Uncle Toms Cabin was ever heard Of.
Fact is, some of the Identical jokes from
the mouths Of the modern sidewalk humor-
lists seem to me to be merely refurbished
and upholstered anew from that somewhat
remote day to fit current conditions.
The dancing of the funny men is more
or less the same-less, should say, on ac-
count of the present lack of clog dancing
on the variety stage. / think that the alb
sence of those ornately clad clog dancers OF
olden days, who used to beat such a rnusi-
cal. clattering rhythm with their hard
udHClH6 cIOSS, Is d QlSIlnct loss TO the va
riety stage of this era. Some of the chaps
who used to do that sort of work-particu-
larly the ones who had to confine their foot
gyrations to the small dancing space OF a
pedestal raised about five feet from the
ground-were exceedingly agile and clever
at the business. All of the jigs, hornpipes.
DUCK and wing dances and that sort of
thing that the young men Of today go wild
over al the variety shows were known and
practiced with equal grace and adroitness
by the dancers Of my boyhood and young
manhood, back in the '40s and sos The
darky dialecticians have scarcely changed
at all, except that the sporting darky OF
the variety stage wasn't known to the va
riety stage of ante -beIlum times. The
knockabout comedians, Dutch and Irish OF
this epoch performed virtually the same
rough tricks with each other on the variety
stage right IN this city long before Abra-
nam Lincoln ever sat in the White House.
Inc young woman who walks down to
the front of the stage and scatters sand
out OF a paper cornucopia and then exc
cutes shuff1ing sand dance is by no means
a development Of this generation I saw
her do the same thing-in crinoline, as
likely as nOt-in the days when gentlemen
were still wearing blue swallow-tail coats
and brass buttons. The so-called sketches
between a virago Of wife and a drunken
husband, In which both of them lambasted
each other to the tremendous delight of
the Just-married youths Of this era, did
precisely the same things, said, in fact,
almost the same words. in the days when
daguerrotypes were only to be afforded by
well-to-do persons and photographs were
unknown
THE fellows who play on all sorts of in
struments are not in any sense of the word
new, either. They may work in more &C.
centric instruments to a greater extent
nowadays, but l saw chaps of this line Of
work play on teapots and sawbucks and
drinking tumblers and cigar boxes and
combs and all that sort of thing long before
the invention of the electric telegraph.
The young women who execute the toe
dancing specialties Of this period are not,
to my mind half so graceful or so expert
In that business as were the wonderful
ballet woman of the forties and fifties,
and l am not one Of the old fogies who
believe that everything of the good old
times was best, either. There were Japan
ese and Chinese jugglers in this country
before the beginning of the last half OF
the present century who could actually dis
count any performances in that line that
l have seen during the past quarter of a
century, and the slack wire and tight-rope
performers of my boyhood were decidedly
more proficient in their respective lines
than are their successors of today.
Oh, yes. the world is better to live in
today by practically incalculable per-
centage than 1t was when I was a boy
but that fact doesn't argue that the va
riety stage has been hitched to the wheel
of the worlds evolution during that time.
by long shot"