simple, as the best kind of mental relief, makes the saddest of mistakes. It is an old-time truism in mental philosophy that there lies often in pain, when it is known to be but an abstract quantity, chiefest and actually best pleasure. Schiller we believe it was who wrote an essay on the pleasure found in tragedy. Pleasure, amusement combined with profit, is the only kind worth the calling so. "No pleasure is where no profit is taken." Genevieve Ward is an admirable and accomplished actress. W. H. Vernon, her leading man, is one of the best actors that we have heard in some considerable time. "ForgetMe-Not" is a capital play. The houses that have enjoyed the above excellencies at McVicker's have been painfully thin. We like to think that, mayhap, prices have had something to do with this; but hardly, for Mrs. Langtry's audiences were uniformly large. Patti sings here this week in three “grand' concerts. Seats have not gone as rapidly as the management expected, but as this is the second farewell appearance here this season, we have reason to predict a rush for the boxoffice during the week. Patti is one of those irresistible things that one cannot forego, if the price of an admission seems within reach. Carrington. ENTR'ACTE MUSINGS. BETWEEN the acts of "Lady Clancarty," produced at Miner's handsome and successful Newark theatre, last week, by Mrs. Langtry, my thoughts went back to that day in the fall of 1882, when the new English beauty was to have made her first appearance in America, at the Park Theatre, on Broadway, near 22d Street. A fortnight previous I had secured my seat for that night in the front row, and arriving in town from Philadelphia that evening, prepared to witness the much-advertised début, found the cosy little theatre a smoking heap of ruins, it having caught afire during the afternoon and burned up like a tinder-box, despite all the efforts of the firemen to save it from total destruction, Mrs. Langtry, meanwhile, witnessing the conflagration from her windows in the Albemarle Hotel. In my theatrical scrap-book, among many other reminiscent trifles, are pasted, side by side, two tickets, duly paid for, but for fiery reasons, never used, one of them for the above début of the Jersey Lily, and the other entitling me to an orchestra-chair at the Standard Theatre, on the evening of Friday, December 4th, 1883, when again the seemingly inevitable fate, sooner or later, of all theatres, destroyed in a brief space of time the play-house in which the good ship "Pinafore had first started on its long and successful voyage in By the way, it was at that same Standard Theatre, one summer, not so very long ago, that Laura Don produced her strange, original play, A Daughter of the Nile." Poor Laura Don! She died not long since, heart-broken by the loss of her baby. All through the earlier scenes of the play she used to have three tiny little green paroquets climbing about on her head, and nestling in her neck, and undisturbed by their occasional little squeaks, as they ceaselessly climbed about in her tangled, thick, auburn wig. Her only reply to some one who asked her why she had introduced them in the play, was, that "she had not introduced them-they had introduced themselves. They were her pets in her home, and she didn't see why she couldn't bring them with her to the stage." Owing to a variety of causes, and despite its many merits of originality and unconventionality, the piece failed. Nevertheless, plucky Effie Ellsler, (who will always be remembered as the original and only Hazel Kirke in the first phenomenal run of that play at the Madison Square,) is to do Miss Don's piece, shortly, under the name of "Egypt." Harry Lee, whom I remember in the original production of the play, will also appear in it. Harry Lee was the best Jagon I have seen, in that lurid melodrama, "The Stranglers of Paris," giving to that disagreeable rôle an intensity of hideous realism that used to thrill the occupants of the front rows, at what is now Harrigan's New Park Theatre. In the cast at that time were also Agnes Booth and pretty Helen Ottolengui, who not long ago was badly hurt by a fall on some provincial stage. DURING the long entr'acte of" Ruddygore," the other night, I suddenly became aware of a most insinuating aroma of good rye whiskey, that seemed to float temptingly around my seat, far in the middle of a row, where I was inextricably planted, and from which I was unwilling to move until the conclusion of the opera, for fear of arousing the disapproving looks of those sitting between me and the aisle. While I was looking about me, and wondering whence came the subtle whiff of fragrance,— for none of those near me had left their seats, -I happened to observe my next-seat neighbor replacing in his pocket a small black box, similar in shape and general appearance to an opera-glass case. Then the secret was made plain, and I could understand the delicate and tantalizing perfume which had just wafted by, and which already my neighbor had overcome with the wily cardamum-seed. The seeming opera-glass case was a snare and a delusion, and contained the latest novelty evolved from the brain of a clever Philadelphian, who has christened his invention the "vinous rubber grape." As its name implies, this is in reality, an artificial grape, the skin of which is made of thin rubber such as that of which children's balloons are made. Filled with any wine or liquor that may be preferred, the "grapes" are put up in small cases for the pocket, and can be taken to the theatre or any other place where it may become desirable to have a little sub-rosa "tonic." Very slight pressure, in the mouth, suffices to break the skin and allow the refreshing contents gently to percolate along the palate, each "grape" being about the size of a plum, rather than of a grape, and consequently holding about the equivalent of a "pony" of liquid comfort. * ** IN my opinion, Daly's is still the most comfortable theatre in New York, despite the various inventions introduced by other newer houses for the comfort of their patrons. It possesses what no other theatre in New York has, but the Grand Opera House-a large and attractive foyer,-in fact, it may be said to have the only really available one for the purpose for which theatre foyers were originally planned, namely, a place where any of the audience, ladies as well as gentlemen, could stroll about for a few minutes during the otherwise tedious entr'actes. At Daly's, every effort has been made to render the foyer as pleasant and attractive a place as possible. Pictures, many of them of considerable interest as reminders of by-gone stage celebrities, cover the walls, while old play-bills, here and there, recall notable representations of the past. * ** How different the scene now, as we see a representative" Daly audience" slowly making its way out after an evening spent with Katherine and Petruchio, and pausing here and there to look at the many objects of interest on the way out,-from the scene that comes to my mind, of this same theatre, when it was known as Wood's Museum, when this pretty foyer was one of the "Wonder-Filled Curiosity-Halls" which then had so potent a charm for at least the juvenile frequenters of the old museum. In those days, a life-sized wax figure, ingeniously arranged by means of clockwork to simulate the movements of an acrobat, hung on a trapeze in the space around which wind the balconies of the Daly foyer to-day, but which then were filled with glass cases, containing stuffed animals, skulls of famous murderers, and similarly diverting objects of interest While the stage performance was going on, Leotard (that was the waxen gymnast's name,) hung quietly from his bar, but as soon as the audience began to pour out from the auditorium into the balconies of the hall, he immediately proceeded to give an exhibition of the flying-trapeze, swinging from one end of the long space to the other, turning the most remarkable somersaults over the bar, sitting and standing upon it, and winding up, as the last strains of the orchestra within gave warning of the beginning of the next act of the play, with a salute that his less active counterparts, in the waxy stillness of the Eden Musee, might envy. Other attractions of the old museum were the ghastly "Chamber of Horrors," (not as artistic, perhaps, as the similar apartment in 23d Street, nowadays, but equally blood curdling,) and a comparatively small, but highly odoriferous menagerie, the odors from which used to sift into the auditorium, from which it was removed by only a few steps, through dark, narrow passages. Anatomists tell us that the olfactory nerves are more closely connected with the brain than any others, and this probably explains why, to this day, the peculiar smell of a menagerie sends my thoughts instantly back to Wood's Museum, just as the pungent odor of a stable reminds me of the old days when the Union Square Theatre was first opened, as a variety resort, and when the presence of the horses in the stalls beneath was plainly announced to the nostrils of spectators above. By the way, this nuisance continued at the Union Square long after it became a regular theatre, devoted to drama and melodrama, and has only been abolished within a year or two. Henry Sargent Blake. On Monday night next the principal performance of the season will take place, when Rubinstein's greatest opera, "Nero," will be produced, for the first time in America, in a truly royal manner. The Russian novelist Tolstoi and Turgenieff are all the rage in the literary world; why should not the Russian Rubinstein, already, through Mr. Thomas's efforts, with a fame in America, become the reigning musical star for a while? JOHN C. FREUND, the well known journalist, is back in New York, hard at a new play. Arrangements are being made to have the piece produced at a leading metropolitan theatre early next season. Mr. Freund has associated himself with Mr. J. Travis Quigg, editing The American Musician. |