In the great city of London one of the pleasures and delights of the
merry Christmas season, to which the children look forward with almost
as much eagerness as to the advent of Santa Claus, is the pantomime.
What a fairy-land is revealed to youthful eyes by this holiday
amusement! All the stories of Mother Goose become living realities. Jack
and Jill roll down the hill; Tom, the piper's son, suffers no end of
misfortunes as a punishment for his theft of the pig; Little Jack Horner
eats his Christmas pie; and in company with all these nursery heroes are
wonderful crowds of all-powerful fairies, who by a wave of their wands
give birds and beasts human intelligence, and render pots, kettles, and
pans animated. This gay assemblage appears in fairy grottoes glistening
with brilliant colors, sylvan dells flooded with soft moonlight, and
meadows on which fairies trace the magic ring and weave the figures of
their mystic dance.
The other side of the picture is less radiant. All these fairies with
spangled hair, these animated kettles and saucepans, these birds and
beasts which dance and hop about in such mirthful fashion, are the
little children of the poor, who in this way seek to earn a few
shillings for the sick mother, or the starving baby brother or sister,
in the dreary and desolate apartments which these poor families call
home.
Weeks before Christmas the parents of these children, and often the
children themselves, beg to be enrolled in the infantile army needed for
the pantomime. The number of applications is so large that the first
selection is made by height alone, no child over four feet being
received for examination. The smaller the child, the better, so long as
it is old enough to learn the duties required of it. The children thus
selected are then placed in a line, and told to put forward their left
feet and hold up their right hands.
Strange as it may seem, there are many poor children so ignorant as to
be unable to do this simple thing. All these are rejected; for a child
who does not know its right hand from its left would probably never be
able to learn the feats required of it in the pantomime. When the final
selection is made and the parts assigned, a crowd of the prettiest and
most graceful are set aside for dainty little fairies and elves. Others
are destined for hideous little gnomes, for animated vegetables and
utensils of all kinds, for cats, monkeys, beetles, and other creatures,
while to the most intelligent are assigned more important parts.
Then begins the task of training this youthful band for its work. The
drill-masters are, as a rule, as good-natured as possible under the
circumstances, but they are very strict, and require the most implicit
obedience to their directions. Many of these little boys and girls grow
very weary in the work of learning to act like fairies and elves, to
jump about as starlings, tomtits, or monkeys, or to march around as
kettles, saucepans, cabbages, and other odd figures which go to make up
the _dramatis personæ_ of a pantomime.
To the children, clad in soft warm garments, who watch all this
brilliant show, everything is beauty and happiness. The little audience,
which gathers with delight to witness the glittering spectacle, knows
nothing of the labor and suffering which these less fortunate children
have endured before everything could be in readiness for the grand
holiday performances. The Christmas holidays for them are a season of
work and anxiety.
The home of the poor children of the pantomime is not like the homes of
the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE, warm and comfortable, and at Christmas-time
gay with wreaths and branches of evergreen, with gifts from Santa Claus,
and with dinner tables groaning under the weight of great turkeys and
steaming plum-puddings; but it is some dismal little room up flights of
rickety stairs, where the cold wind blows through the cracks of the
uncarpeted floor, and where want and sorrow and misery are always
present.
These children rise to a day of toil. Honest little hard workers, many
of them do their best to assist the tired and weary mother to keep the
dismal home as clean and comfortable as possible. The hour for the
pantomime approaches, and clad in their scanty garments, these little
ones hurry away through the snow to appear as sparkling fairies,
carrying delight to thousands of hearts. Where are the fairies who bring
delight to them? When the performance is over, they leave the glistening
grottoes, go back to their comfortless homes, and sleep only to rise
again to new toils and anxieties.
There are poor children everywhere. They are the most numerous in great
cities like London and New York, but there is scarcely a village so
small where some can not be found. Christmas is near. Will the children
blessed with happy homes, and kind parents able to gratify their
slightest wish, leave these little ones with "empty stockings" on
Christmas morning? Remember how small a thing will make their eyes
sparkle with pleasure; and when your own Christmas gifts are showered
upon you by loving hands do not fail to learn by happy experience the
grandeur and truth of the words of the Lord Jesus: "It is more blessed
to give than to receive."