Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-11-10
WASHINGTON PLAYS
That Are Claimed to Depict Life
in the Capital.
CHARACTERS REPRESENTED
Selected From Official and Social
Circles Here.
INEVITABLE STAGE SENATOR
Representatives All Appear to Hail
From Texas Diplomats, Private
Secretaries and Journalists.
INEVITABLE STAGE SENATOR

/ 6SSA SSaAA SS anu OOuA AdA1StS.
1t is gravely announced that no less than
three of "our leading dramatsts" are en-
gagged upon plays depicting Washington
official and social life
This is a cheerful report washingtonians
1 are tremendously fond of the play depict
ing Washington life." 1t takes them so
| far away from home. enables them to peer
! puzzedly into realm of the wholly I'M
familiar. 1t soothes them with it's atmos-
| phere and aroma of a strange -Yemoteness.
| 1t portrays men and women and things and
! customs and manners that they have never
] seen or heard Of.
Who would not visit Tangier or Teheran
The average Washington play is just about
as faithful a picture of life in either one of
those places as it is a portrayal of life IN
| Washington. There have been Washington
plays that breathed the spirit of Timbuktu
| and exhaled the effiuva of Topeka. And I
| ought to know. l wrote one of them my
| self. Who does not know the unfailng
| characteristics and the inevitable charac-
| tiers of the Washington play? Let us pull
some of those perennial puppets out of the
box and look them over.
| The United States senator of the Wash
| irgton play, to begin with! Isn't he always
| the gay old cut-up? He is hopelessiy ad-
dicted to peari-colored clothing. with frock
| coat, and to four-in-hand cravats more
! crimson than the famngo of Paraguay
Generally he has backing brush hirsuts
| chin-piece. He rarely or never walks on or
on or around the stage. His method Of
| lccomotion is sort of Dance or hop, skip
| and jump. In his multitudinous moments
| OF elation he spreads his coat tails out,
| fan-wise, in his hands and trips through
| the convolutions of the Czech mazurka. In
| his sOberer moments he portrays thought
| fitness by pulling reflectively at his hirsute
| chir-piece.
Chummy Old Senator.
He is powerfully chummy with every
body In the play. He whacks his private
| secretary on the back and calls him by the
dimnutive of his first name. He has a
| rcguish eye for the ladies. hating not at
| cEucking some of them beneath the chin.
! He bubbles with boyishness, effervesces
| with an almost hysterical enthusiasm He
| has supernormal insight into legislative
| jobs, and he is systematically above per-
hitting himself to be the beneficiary of any
| of them. He says breezily smart things to
| the ambassador about the effeteneSs of
| n,onarchical states. He confounds the
1 lobby, shames his sinister colleagues en-
+, gagged In playing into the hands of the
lobby, fetches all of the young folks to-
gether and pronounces a rafting benedic-
| ton over them. pays off the mortgage on his
| faithful old black messengers Virginia
farm. and is sort of Citizen Fixit from
! 9dHdpe 10 cOHee. ftuDlcunC ana registering
| he wears the ineradicable smile. In a word,
| he's just the sort of man that the late
Roland Reed or the late John r. Raymond
/ would have been had they served in the
United States Senate. a. ... .--ss
| Washingtonians who have found the toga
| wearers at the north end of the Capitol to
be decidedly gloomy lot of old men, al
1 ways heartily enjoy the stage portrayal of
1.-THE Senator" Washingtonians are just
1 as appreciative of things that are differ
/ ent' as other folks.
| The stage member of the lower house of
| Congress is pretty much the same as the
| stage senator, only he is purposely made
| rougher, and he generally wears Ion :;
| black frook coat in combination with baggy
| trousers and a broad-brimmed black
| slouched hattie inyariable raiment of all
| representatives. as everybody in Washing
| ton knows. The stage representative Il
| pretty likely to talk about the pee-pul, and
| to advert to his deestric' pretty o:ten-he
| never calls II uistrict-and in some of the
| Washington plays he Carlies a sun the size
| of Alkal Ike's in his right hip pocket, pre-
| sumably for the purpose of shooting up per-
| sons who leer at him for eating lemon -ner-
| ingue pic with a Knife.
All Appear to Be From Texas.
| Oddly enough, The great majority of the
| stage representatives appear to be from
! Texas. The uniform they wear, at any rate,
| would help along that presumption. No
| matter whence he halls, however. the stage
| representative Is nearly always d rough
| diamond, even if he does employ the triple
negative spit at casual targets, go cuiess
| from principle and heap eloquent ridicule
upon persons who use such effete things
as finger-nail files. Washingtonans wi
surely miss the stage representative when
| he drops out, If he ever does. He too, is SO
different-just as different the monkey
! faced variety theater cop with the hunter s
green whiskers is from the policeman you
see at the crossings. And if we don't want
/ different and novel things, what do we
| want?
| The lobbyist at the Washington play is the
| sad dog for you. He always wears fur
! trimmed overcoat, top hat that for gloss
| makes the brook of Narcissus lock like
something opaque. and canary diamond
| in his shirt-front about the size of an I'M
| husked haZelnut. He smokes long. blacs
/ cigars all the time and he never takes the
| gilt bands off the cigars-he wants you to
know that the smokes are the real thing.
! He flicks the ashes of these cigars all over
| folks carpets and rugs without apology, but
! they take it good-naturedly, for they know
| the lobbyist to be a powerful and dangerous
| individual who has most of the national
| legislators crushed under his heel or repos-
| ing helplessly in the hollow of his fat hands.
| Dissipateds docking, middle-aged chap, too, as
! rule-yod can all but~sse the concentrated
1 beads of old vintage standing out on his
evil forehead. He DULLES eminent legisla-
shadowy- corners of drawing rooms and
| threatens them. and Kisses at them that if
| they don do what he wants EN- to do
he'll fix 'em, all right-and they cover and
quail under his baleful glare. just nat
| ural as anything you ever saw in your Dor a
| days. He always carries a tremendous roll
| of yellow money in his outside overcoat
| pocket, and you are to suppose that all of
this currency is in the form of $4,000 bills.
Everybody here knows. from having been
| told so since before the patent Office fire,
that when lobbyists do business with
! legislators they invariably use $4,000 bills,
| that being the sort of money least Liable to
! attract attention when the venal legislators
| begin to spend 1T.
| In the Washington play the lobbyist, as
| a matter of course, always gets it where
Hiawatha wore the elks' teeth before the
| final curtain. To some folks Ii seems a mis-
| take and pity to polish him off in this
way, for he certainly appears to be just as
| good a chap as any of the rest of them,
and a swell spender besides. Anyhow. is
| the lobbyist with the fur-trimmed over
coat always "foiled'' in actual Washington
1 life? When 1t comes to that, are there ever
! any lobbyists in actual Washington life
| with fuc-trimmed overcoats? / never saw
any just like that. but the playwrights and
noyelsts who do the Washington thing
have apparently seen them on all sides
| here. and they ought to know what they