The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-07-12
RY FRANKLIN FYLES.

have made the fortune of any play
containing it. for lighting by electricity
and the projecting of Photographic mo-
ton were unknown then, and the best
that a stage manager could do was to
turn the crank of a silk-scraper for
wind, shake a sheet of copper for thun-
der and flash powder in pan for
lightning.
Most of the lazygrafts, as the the
aires were few or no real actors are
called in Coney Island idiom, depend
for profit on the modern cheap and
easy limitations of natural Phenomena.
Creations process, the conditions OF
heaven and hell, cyclones and earth
uuakes. fires and floods, are machine
made nowadays with photography and
electricity. And Coney is a place to
study the devices in the best of big
theatric spectacles to the worst of beer
hall motion pictures.
X x x
Coney Island is not now. in the
atrical sense, a place of makeshift and
taking altogether. Two theatres along
the shore have dramatic stock COM
panies of tolerable quality, making
weekly changes of play in the usual
manner. and three are vaudeville
houses with favora bly-known names in
their programs. Nor is there much of
| fraud outright in the nickel and dime
sideshoWS for in most cases moneys
worth is given The Mammalian the
aires funniest actors in the world
are marionettes, of course, although
the barker takes care not to say so,
and many who enter expect to find them
alive; but they are worked deftly, and
the invisible operators talk for them,
all in the soggy humOr of English elab
! of ha IL
show. Another theatres front-door
| bragger dwells on the assertion that
| the company of dwarfs within are 1.-THE
| littlest actors in all the world while
in truth not one of them is under four
| feet in height, which isn't very dwarf
| ish. and they are not actors of any
/ size except i'm a clumsily amateurish
way. A second party Of half-siZe men
and women. mostly mis-shapen as well
as small, figure as natives of an Afri-
can jungle through which gravity
railway carries tourists.
A racial trick is played Interestingly
in a Japanese tea house on the way to
Coney. The tea. the architecture and
the boss are from Japan. but the six
geishas on the stage are young quad
room and octoroon negresses, chosen for
smallness of stature and lack of
marked African features. Presumably
there are kinks in their hair that won
come out. as they wear straight. glossy
Jap-shaped wigs; but they are so clev-
eriy made I'D, and so well trained in
the geisha way of dancing that they
would pass for genuine with most Wis
itors, if they didn't sing jon-keena and
other Jap songs with a perceptible tone
of the American, if not of the negro.
When once my suspicion was aroused,
fancied that I could detect traces of
the cakewalk in the pittopat steps and
the fanAnd-jar picture poses. Real
japanese girls served as wait
resses. Why, then, are not the
real things brought over for the
stage? Because the japanese govern
ment will hardly ever permit geishas
that is girls who sing and dance pro-
fessionally-to go out of the country
Those who We're at the St Louis fan
were accompanied by official guar
dams. and were not permitted to make
a professional tour of the United
States Hence the bogus geishas and
genuine tea girls in this garden.
: x = =
At Coney Island, and / suppose it is
so at suburban resorts throughout the
country, Japanese young men run the
roll-ball tables. No game of chance Is
permitted on the street, but the law
regards the further end of a long
curbed table, as a game of skill, fol
; winning which prizes may be given
Under the same ruling, rings may b'
tossed at canes or knives, as seen coEl
monty But the Japs have driven the
: rings out of Coney with their balls
and the open front places abound. fit
ted out with the rOll-ball tables
, shelved with cheap Jap wares 70
prizes, and manned by blandly smiling
; little yellow fellows. Gypsies are quit
, as monopolistic in fortune telling, ant
, their tents or tiny booths, are numer
GUS with swarthy soothsayers bedeckeC
showily-all women, some old hays
some pretty girls-eager to tell yol
, tales as long as you chip in a dim
] about every five minutes.
x X X
Z A few Arabians have better quarter
I for the reading of hands. and rattle
: clever tricks of divination. One chap
; more prosperous than the others, ha
: taught his trade to a half-dozen brigh
Y and comely American girls. apd pu
: them into a small house that Nigh
have been brought from Arabia, as il
rugs and tapestries surely were Their