Those were troublesome times, indeed, when we were trying to settle up
the new world and a few other matters at the same time.
Little do the soft-eyed sons of prosperity understand to-day, as they
walk the paved streets of the west under the cold glitter of the
electric light, surrounded by all that can go to make life sweet and
desirable, that not many years ago on that same ground their fathers
fought the untutored savage by night and chased the bounding buffalo by
day.
All, all is changed. Time in his restless and resistless flight has
filed away those early years in the county clerk's office, and these
times are not the old times. With the march of civilization I notice
that it is safer for a man to attend a theatre than in the early days of
the wild and wooly west. Time has made it easier for one to go to the
opera and bring his daylights home with him than it used to be.
It seems but a few short years since my room-mate came home one night
with a long red furrow plowed along the top of his head, where some
gentleman at the theatre had shot him by mistake. My room-mate said
that a tall man had objected to the pianist and suggested that he was
playing pianissimo when he should have played fortissimo, and trouble
grew out of this which had ended in the death of the pianist and the
injury of several disinterested spectators.
And yet the excitement of knowing that you might be killed at any moment
made the theatre more attractive, and instead of scaring men away it
rather induced patronage. Of course it prevented the attendance of
ladies who were at all timid, but it did not cause any falling off in
the receipts. Some thought it aided a good deal, especially where the
show itself didn't have much blood in it.
The Bella Union was a pretty fair sample of the theatre in those days.
It was a low wooden structure with a perpetual band on the outside, that
played gay and festive circus tunes early and often. Inside you could
poison your soul at the bar and see the show at one and the same price
of admission. In an adjoining room silent men joined the hosts of faro
and the timid tenderfoot gamboled o'er the green.
I visited this place of amusement one evening in the capacity of a
reporter for the paper. I would not admit this, even at this late day,
only that it has been overlooked in Mr. Talmage since; and if he could
go through such an ordeal in the interests of humanity, I might be
forgiven for going there professionally to write up the show for our
amusement column.
The programme was quite varied. Negro minstrelsy, sleight-of-hand, opera
bouffe, high tragedy, and that oriental style of quadrille called the
khan-khan, if my sluggish memory be not at fault, formed the principal
attractions of the evening.
At about 10:30 or 11 o'clock the khan-khan was produced upon the stage.
In the midst of it a tall man rose up at the back of the hall, and came
firmly down the aisle with a large, earnest revolver in his right hand.
He was a powerfully built man, with a dyed mustache and wicked eye on
each side of his thin, red nose. He threw up the revolver with a little
click that sounded very loud to me, for he had stopped right behind me
and rested his left hand on my shoulder as he gazed over on the stage. I
could distinctly hear his breath come and go, for it was a very loud
breath, with the odor of onions and emigrant whisky upon it.
The orchestra paused in the middle of a snort, and the man whose duty it
was to swallow the clarionet pulled seven or eight inches of the
instrument out of his face and looked wildly around. The gentleman who
had been agitating the feelings of the bass viol laid it down on the
side, crawled in behind it, and spread a sheet of music over his head.
The stage manager came forward to the footlights and inquired what was
wanted. The tall man with the self-cocking credentials answered simply:
"By Dashety Blank to Blank Blank and back again, I want my wife!"
The manager stepped back into the wings for a moment, and when he came
forward he also had a large musical instrument such as Mr. Remington
used to make before he went into the type-writer business. I can still
remember how large the hole in the barrel looked to me, and how I wished
that I had gone to the meeting of the Literary club that evening, as I
had at first intended to do.
Literature was really more in my line than the drama. I still thought
that it was not too late, perhaps, and so I rose and went out quietly so
as not to disturb any one, and as I went down the aisle the tall man and
stage manager exchanged regrets.
I looked back in time to see the tall man fall in the aisles with his
face in the sawdust and his hand over his breast. Then I went out of the
theatre in an aimless sort of way, taking a northeasterly direction as
the crow flies. I do not think I ran over a mile or two in this way
before I discovered that I was going directly away from home. I rested
awhile and then returned.
On the street I met the stage manager and the tall, dark man just as
they were coming out of the Moss Agate saloon. They said they were very
sorry to notice that I got up and came away at a point in the programme
where they had introduced what they had regarded as the best feature of
the show.
This incident had a great deal to do with turning my attention in the
direction of literature instead of the drama.
But I am glad to notice that many of the horrors of the drama are being
gradually eliminated as the country gets more thickly settled, and the
gory tragedy of a few years ago is gradually giving place to the
refining influences of the "Tin Soldier" and "A Rag Baby."