The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-11-05
SOME THRILLERS.
Exciting MelOdramas Which
Are Playing in the East.
The Emotions of Men and Women
Violently Stirred.
PLEASURE OF POVERTY
The Prices Usually Ten and
Twenty Cents.
The Titles of Some of These
Startling Plays.
PLEASURE OF POVERTY


There is a class of plays thriving and
f1ourishing in the densely populated
east that we of the west know moth
ing Of There is a population ana a
clientele so deeply serious that they
demand their theatrical pabulum be IN
keeping with their lives
1t makes no difference whether the
plays have merit. coherency, methods,
manners or morals. They simply must
have intensity emotion and violence
There must be a hero, and he must
be a workingman. There must be
heroine and she must be a working
girl, and she must refuse money large
amounts, from the villain, who must
wear a frock coat and large diamond
scarf pin. She must tell him that he
is ''punectly terrible" and when this
villain Kisses through his black mus
tache that he has got the hero in
hole, she, the working girl. must cry
out: "rH not marry you, but III give
me life TO save me love"
1t is at the play houses Whefe these
sort of dramas are given that you see
the real enjoyment
At our correct Broadway. with its
cynical, superior and rather blase aud
ftors, the pleasure of q performance,
no matter how fine, compares not at all
with the millions east of the Great
Lakes who go to see dramatic plays
having enough meat in them for
score of police and delicately worded
current comedies.
The fact that our great common peo-
pie in the east want their entertain
ment very highly seasoned is nothing
against them, of course. 1t may be a
matter of education or want OF II.
question of environment and taste, but
1t does seem Sin~nlar that the hun
dreds of regular pIay-gOers of the west
know little about the taste of the thou
sands, even millions, of working peo-
pie in New York, New EngIand, Penn
sylvania. with their teeming tene-
ments, their giant factories, who look
at life and its reflex, the stage, through
spectacles very different from ours
Here, for example, is a list of the
popular and successful plays that are
this season delighting many thousands |
in the cities and the towns east OF
Chicago. L take them from this weeks
You or 1 perhaps never heard OF
them, and yet they are known and
liked by multitudes who live over again
the strenuous careers of the hero and
heroine who despise the villain to the |
extent almost of doing him bodily
harm, and who rejoice beyond words
in the crude graces that make virtue
triumphant and vice a failure:
a Child of the Sums.
No Wedding Bells for Her..
why He Deserted Her..
"A Working Girls Wrongs
when Women SIM
The Stain of Guilt.
For Her Sake"
THE Factory Founding.
1.-THE Factory Girl
For Mothers Sake.
"AIOne in the World.
Her Marriage Vow
Her First False Step"
Her Brothers Crime
How He Won Her"
Her Fight for Love-
THE Child Slaves of New York.
why Women Sim
Driven from Home
what Women Will Do.
why Girls Leave Home"
shes Out of the Fold"
1.-THE Price of Honor"
'-Her Midnight Vow"
1.-THE Flaming Arrow"
"A Desperate Chance.
"A Fight for Love-
SLAVES of the Mine
"OnIy a Shop Girl"
THE Little Mother
Her Fatal Step"
dealers in White Women"
More to Be Pitied Than Scorned-'
welded but No Wife.
Deserted at the Altar"
1.-The White Tigress."
''Too Proud to Beg"
For Her Children's Sake
Her Mad Marriage"
when Women Love-"
a Girl of the Streets"
"a Break for Liberty"
"A Subway Secret
ION the Bridge at Midnight
THE Curse of Drink
You may observe that these plays J
treat largely of the eternal feminine 7
1t is the woman that is the point
of interest always. Her trials and
her virtues and her sue
cesses entertain and thrill She is I
the one the auditors follow with keen '
zest, and her triumph, which always
takes place, eXcites the factory, foun- '
dry and shop public to the very high
est degree. They do not care the toss +
of a copper for observance of the \
unities- What they want is excite
Inent and broad, strong lines. +
In one of the plays 1 mentioned v
above the good hero and the equally
good heroine have had particularly
hard time during four acts. The viii I
lain not only still pursued her. but {
at the opening of the fifth act he had T
the hero in a particularly tight place. I
1t was in a gorge, where the bad l
man, possessing a pistol and a dirk, Q
4 shotgun and other dangerous things, c
met the hero unarmed and Said to a
him: Now, Joe Jennings, yur time [
has comet" The hero shouts back de- e
lance. and as he does so a storm c
arises. the stage grows dark, the two
men fight, the hero, much the slighter q
IF the two. takes away from the viii )
ain the shotgun. the dirk two or n
-hree knives after a mighty combat IL
md proposes that 1.-The duel shall be
Ought fair His foot slips, however, L
Ind he drops to the ground. Then the
rillafn gloatingly stands over him with
cooked pistol. At this moment light il