The San Francisco call., 1904-06-29

which, by the way, is the dress circle
one on the prompt" side. And the
reason is that at the beginning of The
Earl and the Girls run three officers
of the fashionab BILE Guards" Regiment
took the box on speculation for period
Of six months at a rental of SIS a
night and since have been charging
practically what they like for its use
on such evenings as they are not oc-
cupying the place themselves. Forty
forty-fve and fifty dollars has been
paid by outsiders thus far for the
Sammy box, with the result that the
, three Guardsmen" are flush And
fer some time they have been utilizing
no small part of their gains in acquir-
ing attractive novelties, which-on the
nights when they are in possession of
the bOx-they throw or hand down to
the singers on the stage. Bouquets of
costly flowers are the least eXtrava
CANT Of these tokens. Dainty, fluffy
sunshades are among the more lasting
presents. At Eastertide twenty-six
huge eggs of satin containing beautiful
presents were passed over to the sing
ers, and once a small pet monkey was
sent clambering down from the box to
the stage a a gift. Even this was sur
passed. however, one night when, let
down by ropes, came huge dog ken
mel made of Parma violets in which
sat a valuable bulldog.
The Sammy box is as interesting
to the audience as il is TO the singers
Three DAYS before Eton reopened re-
Gently the box was taken by ten
youthful Etonians. who had succeed
ed in outbidding all other competitors.
Sammy" il may be remembered,
began it's history in America, when
Blanche Ring sang it in a piece called
the Defender" which had been built
UP around the yacht race, and on
the night when Sir Thomas Upton
went to see the piece addressed the
song 10 the box in which he sat. Last
November Miss Ring sang Sammy
at the Palace Theater in London, and
when the Savoy Theater opened with
'The Love Birds" she sang Il again,
and on the second night of the piece
two men were so enthralled with
Sammy that they leaped from their
box TO the stage.
In THE Earl and the Girl'' Louise
Pounds sings Sammy surrounded by
a whole bevy Of charming girls.
/ Since the recent virulent outbreaks
of ''booing" from the gallery gods a
first performance of a play in London
has become more a trying affair than
ever. And when the actor-manager
has a brand-new author into the bar
gain he can be pardoned for dropping
a good many lines now and then
through nervousness. The production
OF The Edge of the Storms meant a
good deal to Forbes Robertson at the
Duke of York's Theater this week,
for luck has not always been with him
Of late; but it looks as if he could
count on a fair amount of success
for this venture. There was no boo"
and there was much real enthusiasm
for Margaret Young's melodrama The
plot deals with the effort of a fiery
Hungarian girl to avenge the death
of her father at the hands of young
Englishman. whom she had rescued
after her father had condemned him
TO execution. She traces the supposed
murderer to India and then gets mar
ried to him without knowing that he
is the man who killed her father. But
at the moment Of the dread discovery
she learns that the deed had been COM
mitted unawares, and love conquers
in the end,