Part 20 (1/2)

_Scene I. The Garden of Joy_

Cho-Cho The Clown Everychild Mother, Father, and dancing children

_Scene II. Sweat-shop_

Father, Mother, three children, Everychild

_Scene III. The Farmstead_

Jim the Father, Mary the Mother, Billie, Tom, and Rosie, their children. Cho-Cho and Everychild

_Scene IV. The Coal-mine_

Joe, Jack, Bert--three old miners and two boys

_Final Scene. Same as first scene_

Cho-Cho, Everychild, Mother, Father. Old group of children and new group with Everychild

PROLOGUE

BY CHO-CHO

Good people!

This is the Play of Everychild With Cho-Cho As Author and Manager.

The play has defects-- It has good points-- And bad points-- Like the world itself-- Like life!

Perhaps the author of the world Is something like me, A little grotesque, A little whimsical, Serious often, Sometimes all the more serious Seen through a Fool's words With cap and jingle of bells.

In this droll world There are lots of children Who are the children of fools-- Like me.

Good people!

I bespeak your patience With Everychild Daughter of a Clown.

SCENE I: _Stage dark as curtain rises. Moderate starlight and quiet music of cradle-song type. Little fairies come out dancing in the darkness with firefly lamps and sing the following cradle song:_

Some one is sleeping Out in the dark Where fireflies glimmer Spark upon spark.

Some little stranger Come from afar Under the glory Of moon and of star.

Deep in the blossoms That drift as they fall Some one is sleeping And stirs not at all.

Sleep, little stranger!

The night is near gone; Sleep, little stranger, But dream of the dawn!

_The dim light reveals a dark figure lying on the mosses at the foot of an old tree. As the light grows gradually stronger the dark object begins to move, to slowly take off one after another of black coverings, revealing a little girl of nine or ten years, dressed in white. She rubs her eyes, looks about wonderingly, and slowly rises to a standing position. Meanwhile the earth grows more luminous and roseate. The birds have begun to twitter now and then before the dawn, and their notes increase in number and variety with the approach of morning. The growing light reveals an orchard of old apple-trees near at hand in full bloom, with petals falling, and hills and mountains lifting and towering upward higher and higher into the blue distance.