Part 5 (2/2)

I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.

Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called ”Egmont.”

The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to take a note to Mr. O'Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had returned with the statement that Mr. O'Connor was busy rehearsing his soliloquy and removing a s.h.i.+rred egg from his outer clothing.

He also said he could not promise an audience to any one. It was all he could do to get one for himself.

So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is in front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with long-handled hay knives are on guard.

All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net over his head--so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys it.

n.o.body seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as quick as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the head with a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I knew then that it was only a man made up to look like a presence.

One of the guards, whose name, I think, was Smith, had a droop to his legs and an instability about the knees which were highly enjoyable. He walked like a frozen-toed hen, and stood first on one foot and then on the other, with almost human intelligence. His support was about as poor as O'Connor's.

After awhile the ghost vanished with what is called a stately tread, but I would regard it more as a territorial tread. Horatio did quite well, and the audience frequently listened to him. Still, he was about the only one who did not receive crackers or cheese as a slight testimonial of regard from admirers in the audience.

Finally, Mr. James Owen O'Connor entered. It was fully five minutes before he could be heard, and even then he could not. His mouth moved now and then, and a gesture would suddenly burst forth, but I did not hear what he said. At least I could not hear distinctly what he said.

After awhile, as people got tired and went away, I could hear better.

Mr. O'Connor introduced into his Hamlet a set of gestures evidently intended for another play. People who are going to act out on the stage can not be too careful in getting a good a.s.sortment of gestures that will fit the play itself. James had provided himself with a set of gestures which might do for Little Eva, or ”Ten Nights in a Bar-room,”

but they did not fit Hamlet. There is where he makes a mistake. Hamlet is a man whose victuals don't agree with him. He feels depressed and talks about sticking a bodkin into himself, but Mr. O'Connor gives him a light, elastic step, and an air of persiflage, _bonhomie_, and frisk, which do not match the character.

Mr. O'Connor sought in his conception and interpretation of Hamlet to give it a free and jaunty Kokomo flavor--a nameless tw.a.n.g of tansy and dried apples, which Shakespeare himself failed to sock into his great drama.

James did this, and more. He took the wild-eyed and morbid Blackwell's Island Hamlet, and made him a $2 parlor humorist who could be the life of the party, or give lessons in elocution, and take applause or crackers and cheese in return for the same.

There is really a good lesson to be learned from the pitiful and pathetic tale of James Owen O'Connor. Injudicious friends, doubtless, overestimated his value, and unduly praised his Smart Aleckutionary powers. Loving himself unwisely but too extensively, he was led away into the great, untried purgatory of public scrutiny, and the general indictment followed.

The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is no cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from mediocrity to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient student, and the earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide his time, gets what James Owen O'Connor received--the just condemnation of those who are abundantly able to judge.

In seeking to combine the melancholy beauty of Hamlet's deep and earnest pathos with the gentle humor of ”A Hole in the Ground,” Mr. O'Connor evidently corked himself, as we say at the Browning Club, and it was but justice after all. Before we curse the condemnation of the people and the press, let us carefully and prayerfully look ourselves over, and see if we have not overestimated ourselves.

There are many men alive to-day who do not dare say anything without first thinking how it will read in their memoirs--men whom we can not, therefore, thoroughly enjoy until they are dead, and yet whose graves will be kept green only so long as the appropriation lasts.

MY MATRIMONIAL BUREAU

X

The following matrimonial inquiries are now in my hands awaiting replies, and I take this method of giving them more air. A few months ago I injudiciously stated that I should take great pleasure in booming, or otherwise whooping up, everything in the matrimonial line, if those who needed aid would send me twenty-five cents, with personal description, lock of hair, and general outline of the style of husband or wife they were yearning for. As a result of thus yielding to a blind impulse and giving it currency through the daily press, I now have a huge ma.s.s of more or less soiled postage stamps that look as though they had made a bicycle tour around the world, a haymow full of letters breathing love till you can't rest, and a barrel of calico-colored hair.

It is a rare treat to look at this a.s.sortment of hair of every hue and degree of curl and coa.r.s.eness. When I pour it out on the floor it looks like the interior of a western barber shop during a state fair. When I want fun again I shall not undertake to obtain it by starting a matrimonial agency.

I have one letter from a man of twenty-seven summers, who pants to bestow himself on some one at as early a date as possible. He tells me on a separate slip of paper, which he wishes destroyed, that he is a little given to ”bowling up,” a term with which I am not familiar, but he goes on to say that a good, n.o.ble woman, with love in her heart and an earnest desire to save a soul, could rush in and gather him in in good shape. He says that he is worthy, and that if he could be s.n.a.t.c.hed from a drunkard's grave in time he believes he would become eminent. He says that several people have already been overheard to say: ”What a pity he drinks.” From this he is led to believe that a good wife, with some means, could redeem him. He says it is quite a common thing for young women where he lives to marry young men for the purpose of saving them.

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