I.

This seemed like a challenge of some sort, and I prepared myself to take

it up warily. I said I should be very sorry to do good, as people called

it; because such a line of action nearly always ended in spiritual pride

for the doer and general demoralization for the doee. Still, I said, a

law had lately been passed in Ohio giving a man who found himself behind

a high hat at the theatre a claim for damages against the manager; and if

the passage of this law could be traced ever so faintly and indirectly to

my teachings, I should not altogether grieve for the good I had done.

I added that if all the States should pass such a law, and other laws

fixing a low price for a certain number of seats at the theatres, or

obliging the managers to give one free performance every month, as the

law does in Paris, and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays--

“I see what you mean,” said my friend, a little impatiently. “You mean

sumptuary legislation. But I have not come to talk to you upon that

subject, for then you would probably want to do all the talking yourself.

I want to ask you if you have visited any of the cheaper amusements of

this metropolis, or know anything of the really clever and charming

things one may see there for a very little money.”

“Ten cents, for instance?”

“Yes.”

I answered that I would never own to having come as low down as that; and

I expressed a hardy and somewhat inconsistent doubt of the quality of the

amusement that could be had for that money. I questioned if anything

intellectual could be had for it.

“What do you say to the ten-cent magazines?” my friend retorted. “And

do you pretend that the two-dollar drama is intellectual?”

I had to confess that it generally was not, and that this was part of my

grief with it.

Then he said: “I don’t contend that it is intellectual, but I say that it

is often clever and charming at the ten-cent shows, just as it is less

often clever and charming in the ten-cent magazines. I think the average

of propriety is rather higher than it is at the two-dollar theatres; and

it is much more instructive at the ten-cent shows, if you come to that.

The other day,” said my friend, and in squaring himself comfortably in

his chair and finding room for his elbow on the corner of my table he

knocked off some books for review, “I went to a dime museum for an hour

that I had between two appointments, and I must say that I never passed

an hour’s time more agreeably. In the curio hall, as one of the

lecturers on the curios called it--they had several lecturers in white

wigs and scholars’ caps and gowns--there was not a great deal to see, I

confess; but everything was very high-class. There was the inventor of a

perpetual motion, who lectured upon it and explained it from a diagram.

There was a fortune-teller in a three-foot tent whom I did not interview;

there were five macaws in one cage, and two gloomy apes in another. On a

platform at the end of the hall was an Australian family a good deal

gloomier than the apes, who sat in the costume of our latitude, staring

down the room with varying expressions all verging upon melancholy

madness, and who gave me such a pang of compassion as I have seldom got

from the tragedy of the two-dollar theatres. They allowed me to come

quite close up to them, and to feed my pity upon their wild dejection in

exile without stint. I couldn’t enter into conversation with them, and

express my regret at finding them so far from their native boomerangs and

kangaroos and pinetree grubs, but I know they felt my sympathy, it was so

evident. I didn’t see their performance, and I don’t know that they had

any. They may simply have been there ethnologically, but this was a good

object, and the sight of their spiritual misery was alone worth the price

of admission.

“After the inventor of the perpetual motion had brought his harangue to a

close, we all went round to the dais where a lady in blue spectacles

lectured us upon a fire-escape which she had invented, and operated a

small model of it. None of the events were so exciting that we could

regret it when the chief lecturer announced that this was the end of the

entertainment in the curio hall, and that now the performance in the

theatre was about to begin. He invited us to buy tickets at an

additional charge of five, ten, or fifteen cents for the gallery,

orchestra circle, or orchestra.

“I thought I could afford an orchestra stall, for once. We were three in

the orchestra, another man and a young mother, not counting the little

boy she had with her; there were two people in the gallery, and a dozen

at least in the orchestra circle. An attendant shouted, ‘Hats off!’ and

the other man and I uncovered, and a lady came up from under the stage

and began to play the piano in front of it. The curtain rose, and the

entertainment began at once. It was a passage apparently from real life,

and it involved a dissatisfied boarder and the daughter of the landlady.

There was not much coherence in it, but there was a good deal of

conscience on the part of the actors, who toiled through it with

unflagging energy. The young woman was equipped for the dance she

brought into it at one point rather than for the part she had to sustain

in the drama. It was a very blameless dance, and she gave it as if she

was tired of it, but was not going to falter. She delivered her lines

with a hard, Southwestern accent, and I liked fancying her having come up

in a simpler-hearted section of the country than ours, encouraged by a

strong local belief that she was destined to do Juliet and Lady Macbeth,

or Peg Woffington at the least; but very likely she had not.

“Her performance was followed by an event involving a single character.

The actor, naturally, was blackened as to his skin, but as to his dress

he was all in white, and at the first glance I could see that he had

temperament. I suspect that he thought I had, too, for he began to

address his entire drama to me. This was not surprising, for it would

not have been the thing for him to single out the young mother; and the

other man in the orchestra stalls seemed a vague and inexperienced youth,

whom he would hardly have given the preference over me. I felt the

compliment, but upon the whole it embarrassed me; it was too intimate,

and it gave me a publicity I would willingly have foregone. I did what I

could to reject it, by feigning an indifference to his jokes; I even

frowned a measure of disapproval; but this merely stimulated his

ambition. He was really a merry creature, and when he had got off a

number of very good things which were received in perfect silence, and

looked over his audience with a woe-begone eye, and said, with an effect

of delicate apology, ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you any,’ I broke down

and laughed, and that delivered me into his hand. He immediately said to

me that now he would tell me about a friend of his, who had a pretty

large family, eight of them living, and one in Philadelphia; and then for

no reason he seemed to change his mind, and said he would sing me a song

written expressly for him--by an expressman; and he went on from one wild

gayety to another, until he had worked his audience up to quite a frenzy

of enthusiasm, and almost had a recall when he went off.

“I was rather glad to be rid of him, and I was glad that the next

performers, who were a lady and a gentleman contortionist of Spanish-

American extraction, behaved more impartially. They were really

remarkable artists in their way, and though it’s a painful way, I

couldn’t help admiring their gift in bowknots and other difficult poses.

The gentleman got abundant applause, but the lady at first got none. I

think perhaps it was because, with the correct feeling that prevailed

among us, we could not see a lady contort herself with so much approval

as a gentleman, and that there was a wound to our sense of propriety in

witnessing her skill. But I could see that the poor girl was hurt in her

artist pride by our severity, and at the next thing she did I led off the

applause with my umbrella. She instantly lighted up with a joyful smile,

and the young mother in the orchestra leaned forward to nod her sympathy

to me while she clapped. We were fast becoming a domestic circle, and it

was very pleasant, but I thought that upon the whole I had better go.”

“And do you think you had a profitable hour at that show?” I asked, with

a smile that was meant to be sceptical.

“Profitable?” said my friend. “I said agreeable. I don’t know about

the profit. But it was very good variety, and it was very cheap. I

understand that this is the kind of thing you want the two-dollar theatre

to come down to, or up to.”

“Not exactly, or not quite,” I returned, thoughtfully, “though I must say

I think your time was as well spent as it would have been at most of the

plays I have seen this winter.”

My friend left the point, and said, with a dreamy air: “It was all very

pathetic, in a way. Three out of those five people were really clever,

and certainly artists. That colored brother was almost a genius, a very

common variety of genius, but still a genius, with a gift for his calling

that couldn’t be disputed. He was a genuine humorist, and I sorrowed

over him--after I got safely away from his intimacy--as I should over

some author who was struggling along without winning his public. Why

not? One is as much in the show business as the other. There is a

difference of quality rather than of kind. Perhaps by-and-by my colored

humorist will make a strike with his branch of the public, as you are

always hoping to do with yours.”

“You don’t think you’re making yourself rather offensive?” I suggested.

“Not intentionally. Aren’t the arts one? How can you say that any art

is higher than the others? Why is it nobler to contort the mind than to

contort the body?”

“I am always saying that it is not at all noble to contort the mind,”

I returned, “and I feel that to aim at nothing higher than the amusement

of your readers is to bring yourself most distinctly to the level of the

show business.”

“Yes, I know that is your pose,” said my friend. “And I dare say you

really think that you make a distinction in facts when you make a

distinction in terms. If you don’t amuse your readers, you don’t keep

them; practically, you cease to exist. You may call it interesting them,

if you like; but, really, what is the difference? You do your little

act, and because the stage is large and the house is fine, you fancy you

are not of that sad brotherhood which aims to please in humbler places,

with perhaps cruder means--”

“I don’t know whether I like your saws less than your instances, or your

instances less than your saws,” I broke in. “Have you been at the circus

yet?”