Chapter XXXV (3)

The stranger at Limoges is perforce an early riser. He is aroused from his slumbers at daybreak by a furious reveille of drum and bugle from the numerous barracks about the city, and from that time on bugle-practice and drum-practice hold high revel, until the despairing visitor is obliged, in sheer self-defence, to rise, dress and stroll out to see where all the racket comes from. He will understand it when he learns that of the seventy thousand people in the city about him, ten thousand are soldiers. If he would gain some idea of the number and extent of the _casernes_ in which this good-sized army is quartered--in fact, if he would have a view of the whole city just awakening to its daily life--let him stroll up through one or another of the steep streets leading to the Place d'Orsay, a hilltop park crowned with forest trees and overlooking all Limoges. There was once a Roman arena on this spot, but its memory now lives only in the name of an adjacent street. If the morning be clear the view from this point is superb. Let the spectator turn where he may, he looks over densely-crowded housetops toward a vast amphitheatre of surrounding hills dotted with châteaux and farms, and enclosing the circular valley or basin in the centre of which, upon a knoll, stands the city itself. About him the busy hum of toil is already audible. Scores of tall chimneys puffing out smoke and flames mark the numerous porcelain-factories scattered here and there through the city's limits. Close at hand the tapering spire of St. Michael's, and beyond it that of St. Pierre, stand out in clear relief against the morning sky, while farther in the distance the cathedral looms up grand and shapely among the morning shadows rising from the river at its base.

By this time the shops are opened, everybody is stirring, and the visitor may as well take a stroll over to the market-place. On his way he will pass the Palais de Justice on the Place d'Aisne and the military club-house on the Rue Darnay, both of them elegant structures; he will traverse a quarter where the names on the signs and the noses on the shopkeepers' faces give an emphatic answer, so far as Limoges is concerned, to the time-honored query, "Where, oh where, are the Hebrew children?" he will pass through the fashionable shopping-region, where great dry-goods stores, dedicated "Au Louvre," "À la Ville de Paris," etc., glare at him with their enormous plateglass panes and a wealth of fabrics within; he will remark a surprising predominance of pastry-shops and drug-stores, though it need not necessarily be inferred that one is the complement of the other: in some streets he will find the sidewalks wide and well laid, in others they are rough and painful, tapering off to nothing alongside the base of some projecting building. If he asks a question of the shopkeepers in the doorways, they answer him pleasantly and politely; if he scan the faces of passers-by, he finds them bright, hopeful and good-natured. Groups of neatly-dressed, bareheaded working-girls go chatting by: men in blouses and slouch hats, carrying tin dinner-pails, hurry past. Vellum-faced old women crying vegetables in the shrillest of voices; here and there a guard of soldiers following a forage-wagon piled high with loaves of bread two feet long; milkmen's wagons, bakers' wagons, and an occasional patient donkey toiling up-hill with a stout country dame and a load of cabbages in the cart behind him; sedate housewives hurrying homeward, followed by little _bonnes_ with laden baskets on their arms,--all tell the observer that he is in the neighborhood of the market.

What a babel of confusion it is, this motley gathering of fruit-and vegetable-women, seated in long rows of improvised stalls along the paved slope, enclosed on all sides by tall buildings, which forms the market-place! They all wear red-and-yellow head-kerchiefs, and are chattering away for dear life. It is a recognized principle in their code to ask any price they think they can get for their wares, but for all that living is not costly at Limoges. Good beef and mutton sell at eighteen cents a pound, and articles of _charcuterie_, such as ham, sausage, _pâtés_ and _galantine_, are sold in great quantities. Vegetables of all kinds are plentiful and cheap, and in the season there is an abundance of pears, apples, grapes and figs. In the autumn, too, thousands of bushels of a giant species of chestnut are gathered and sold or shipped to other markets. Mushrooms as large round as a dinner-plate are sold by weight, and women and children can be seen munching them as they would crusts of bread. Wine is poor and high-priced, for the Limousin is not a vine-growing province, and with the recent rise in price the poorer classes have to forego the daily litre of _vin rouge_ which their compatriots in the neighboring Charente still consider indispensable to their health and happiness. Looking at these market-people about him, the observer can easily see that they are not habitual wine-drinkers. They take a little cider, a little beer, but wine only now and then. Simplicity and frugality of diet, in fact, mark the habits of all the people, rich and poor, of the province. A cup of coffee on rising, a plate of soup at nine, a substantial meal at mid-day, and another plate of soup between six and eight in the evening, make up the bill of fare for the day.

The hotels, however, keep up the Parisian hours for meals, and as breakfast does not come until eleven o'clock, it would be well for our visitor to devote his remaining morning hours to the famous Ceramic Museum, which is not far from the Place d'Orsay, and which contains the finest collection of faïence and porcelains in the world excepting that at the Louvre. All the principal European countries are here found represented by specimens of their wares, but the United States, alas! is conspicuous by its absence, notwithstanding the fact that last year a notice was generally published throughout the American press advising our porcelain-makers that samples, if sent by them to the United States consular agent at Limoges, would be exhibited in the museum side by side with the rest. In connection with the establishment a free school for drawing and porcelain-decoration has been inaugurated by the city, and with such success that it numbers six hundred and fifty pupils of both sexes and all ranks of society.

After his morning stroll our visitor to Limoges will doubtless breakfast well. At either the Boule d'Or, the Richelieu or La Paix he cannot fail to do so, provided he furnish the appetite. There are other hotels, some of them rejoicing in such fanciful names as "The Golden Chariot" or "The Silver Eagle," but the three first named are those that the arriving stranger generally hears screamed in his ears by the runners at the railway-dépôt. The prices at either of them, varying from a dollar and a half to two dollars per day, seem ridiculously cheap to an American, for the bill of fare embraces an elaborate array of courses at the table-d'hôte, and wine is included. Carriage-hire, too; is remarkably reasonable: for a five-franc piece one can hire for the best part of the afternoon either a one-horse coupé or a two-horse barouche with a liveried driver. Tell the coachman to drive you out of town anywhere to get a good view of the city. He will touch his hat, crack his whip, and away you go. He will probably take you past the statue of Marshal Jourdan, the Cercle de l'Union--a splendidly-appointed private club--and so down through the Cité to the Boulevard Pont Neuf, leading to the bridge of the same name. The view up and down the river as you cross is extremely picturesque, the banks ascending in steep declivities on either side. Above is the ancient bridge of St. Étienne, and below is the equally ancient bridge of St. Martial, each, like the Pont Neuf, leading to its faubourg beyond the river. Under the shade of the shapely poplars lining the placid current hundreds of laundresses are to be seen kneeling in little wooden boxes at the water's edge, each having before her a smooth flat stone on which she scrubs, kneads and pounds somebody's family linen. The roadway up through the faubourg is dirty and tedious: unkempt children are playing in the street and ill-bred dogs run out to bark as you pass. But beyond are the loveliest of rural scenes--long, shaded road-ways where, through the closely-aligned trees, one looks down upon the city and the river spread like a picture beneath: here and there, standing back from the roadside and embowered in foliage, are ancestral châteaux, seeming to care very little for the common world about them. The farms are models of agricultural industry and neatness. Prosperity and thrift are written in large letters all over the cultivated fields and well-cared-for pastures that meet the eye at every turn. Men and women are working together among the grain or in the hay-meadows. A turn in the road brings us to Panazol, a little hamlet with not over twenty houses, yet with a vine-clad toy of a church, and a little shed, New England like, adjoining it, for the convenience of the farmers who come here to mass on Sundays. Before the doors peasant-women sit working at their looms, and bright-faced matrons sit knitting in the windows. The village streets are grass-grown and still, and but for an occasional old woman, with an immense broad-brimmed straw hat on her head and a load of fagots on her back, our carriage might dash at breakneck speed through Panazol without fear of injuring any one.

Within a radius of a few miles there are a dozen pleasant points for afternoon drives--Rochechouart, with its historic château; St. Yrieix, a bright and pretty town, with a church that has a history; St. Léonard, with its famous church, an exact model of St. Sepulchre at Jerusalem; the abbaye of Solignac, where St. Éloi worked as a silversmith; and Aix, farther down on the Vienne, where you can drive down for dinner, and then return home along the river-bank by moonlight. Either one of these trips would prove interesting: your gorgeous driver is very communicative, and tells you all about the owners of this place and that, what their family pedigrees are, whom they married, how much they are worth and how much they paid per hectare for the property.

There is a fair theatre where one can hear _Le Petit Duc, Les Cloches_ or some other popular opera sung three times a week. One sees very few elaborately-dressed ladies in the audiences, for the city, being an industrial one and with a large majority of its population given to their daily labor for support, is not much wedded to fashion: it is practical rather than worldly. The constant round of dinners, soirées, balls and receptions which characterizes French high life in many and even smaller cities is lacking here. The wealthier people, as a rule, are the porcelain-manufacturers, who live in a quiet, substantial, sensible way, eschewing the follies and fatigues of fashionable existence. Full half of the population depends, directly or indirectly, on the porcelain industry for its support. It was only a hundred and thirty years ago that this industry had its birth. For centuries before that, it is true, Limoges had been famous through all Europe for its enamels. Bernard Palissy was a citizen of Limoges, and Léonard Limousin was appointed "enamel-painter in ordinary" to King Francis I. It is possible that this art was brought here from Italy by some Venetian merchants, who in 977 built up a portion of what is now the Faubourg St. Martial and established an extensive trade in fabrics and spices with the Levant. But it was not until 1765 that Doctor Darnay, a surgeon of Limoges, discovered near the neighboring village of St. Yrieix the inexhaustible quarries of kaolin which were destined to become a source of wealth and employment for all the surrounding population. Like most discoverers, he failed to realize any substantial benefits. A Bordeaux druggist, one De Villaret, managed to secure a patent in advance of him, and poor Darnay, defeated in a suit for damages, had to content himself with the posthumous honor of having a street named after him in the city which has most profited by his discovery.

In 1772 the first porcelain-factory was established at Limoges by Messrs. Massier, Fourneyra & Grellet _frères_, under the protection of the wise and liberal intendant Turgot. It is the decoration of the porcelain that gives it its value as well as its charm. Its manufacture is comparatively easy and simple. The kaolin, a dry, whitish-yellow clay, is first taken in lumps from the quarry and carried to one or another of the numerous mills lining the Vienne, where it is ground fine and reduced to a liquid paste closely resembling bread-dough. In this shape it is carried in sacks to the factory, where, having been again worked over to secure fineness and pliability, it is ready for the moulder's or the turner's hands. Nothing can exceed the deftness and skill with which, under the magic touch of the experienced workman, shapeless lumps of this prepared clay are fashioned into cups, dishes, vases and every conceivable form of the most delicate pottery. It is so quickly done, too! One handy operative can make two hundred cups a day. Once moulded into shape, the piece of pottery is dipped into liquid enamel which gives it hardness and brilliancy. It receives too the stamp of the manufacturer. It is then placed in what is called a _gazette_ to be put into the oven to bake. The gazette is composed of a pair of deep earthen saucers fitting tightly together and forming a circular box, varying in dimensions according to the sizes of the objects to be baked. The greater part of those in use are little larger than an ordinary soup-plate. In this gazette the piece of porcelain is hermetically sealed up, and then it goes into the oven with thousands of other gazettes, until the great circular furnace, twenty feet in diameter and two stories high, is packed full from side to side and from bottom to top. Then the doors are closed, the fires are lit, and for a period varying from thirty-four to fifty hours the baking process goes on at a temperature of thirty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even after the fires are extinguished the heat in the furnace continues intense, and twelve hours more must elapse before it subsides sufficiently to permit the workmen to enter, remove and open the gazettes, take out the porcelains, which are now hard and brilliant, and send them to the artists for decoration. There are in all some seventy of these ovens in Limoges, with an average capacity of six thousand pieces. As most of them are kept going night and day, the reader can form some idea of the amount daily manufactured.

But thus far we have only followed the process through its homelier stages. The decorative work, yet to come, is the most delicate as it is the most interesting. But not every piece of porcelain that comes out of the oven reaches the decorator's hands. Of every hundred pieces baked, an average of twenty-five are thrown out as inferior, and the remaining seventy-five are divided or sorted out into four grades, known as second choice, choice, élite and special, in the average proportion of thirty, twenty-five, fifteen and five to each class respectively. The special is employed only for very rich decorations; élite is recommended for best selection; the choice is for ordinary usage; and the second choice is of such fair quality as to be pronounced less imperfect than the best porcelain sent from China and Japan, and specially recommended as the most economical pottery. The price of decoration varies according to the selection of porcelain to which it is applied. Thus, for instance, the lower grades of artists are employed upon the second-choice porcelain, while the best painters and decorators work upon the élite: the special is only given to artists of the most exceptional merit. The various artists, painters and decorators, are paid salaries which, according to the French standard, are considered munificent, though they sound small enough to American ears. Much of the decorating, such as flowers, birds, vines, etc., is done by laying the paper designs upon the porcelain and painting over them. The gilding is more laborious, and enormous quantities of pure gold-leaf are used. The gold, once laid on, can only become permanently part and parcel of the porcelain by being subjected to an additional six hours' baking at a temperature of eight hundred degrees Réaumur.

Not less important is the decoration of faïence-ware, which varies infinitely according to the desired effect. Haviland & Co., who may be taken as a standard, classify their faïences into six groups--viz. cream faïences, which are thus named from their color, and which are decorated with paintings under the enamel or with translucid enamels; enamelled paintings, possessing all the tone, richness and variety of oil-paintings; grand-fire fresco paintings, or exact representations of wall frescoes, and especially adapted for panels or architectural ornaments; gilt enamels, reproducing Chinese lac-paintings or vases of precious stones; Limoges enamels, very similar to the ancient enamels of Léonard Limousin; and sculptured faïences, painted either under the enamel or in grand-fire frescoes: the figures alone are never painted in these latter. Each piece of sculptured faïence is the model itself, signed by the artist: not one of them is ever reproduced by moulding. In the museum connected with the Haviland works are to be seen some remarkably fine specimens of their faïence-wares. The Havilands, themselves Americans, who by their enterprise and integrity reflect credit upon their country, have done much to popularize the love for ceramics in the New World, and the head of the house, Mr. Charles Haviland, was worthily decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at the close of the Paris Exposition. The firm has recently completed the manufacture of an elaborate dinner-service for the White House at Washington, based upon designs by a well-known American artist. Long may that service grace the board of the first magistrate of our nation as a souvenir and symbol of the two great republics of the world--as a substantial evidence of what French resources, combined with American industry, have produced from the rough and shapeless clods of clay which so many preceding centuries have passed by unnoticed!

GEORGE L. CATLIN.

THREE ROSES.

"Oh, shall it be a red rose, a red rose, a red rose,
A deep-tinted red rose?" said she.
"In the sunny garden-closes
How they burn, the dark-red roses!
How they lift their glowing cups to me!

"Oh, shall it be a blush rose, a blush rose, a blush rose,
A dewy, dainty blush rose?" said she.
"At its heart a flush so tender,
With a veiled and softened splendor,
How it droops its languid head toward me!

"Oh, shall it be a white rose, a white rose, a white rose,
A fair and shining white rose?" said she.
"With its pale cheek tinted faintly,
Like a vestal pure and saintly,
Lo! it lights its silver lamp for me."

JULIA C.R. DORR.

THE PRACTICAL HISTORY OF A PLAY.

"THE play, the play's the thing!"--not whereby, as moody Hamlet hath it, to catch the conscience of the king, but as a possible means of emancipation from the galling and unprofitable conditions of a literary career. A book which embodies months of research, the refined outcome of scholarly labor and reflective observation, may secure a definite and honorable place for its author, but it is not likely to yield as much in a pecuniary way as the salary of a good clerk. Even a successful novel which strikes the popular fancy and circulates through many editions is only a matter of a few hundred dollars. We look over the whole field of bookmaking and periodical-writing without discovering one practitioner of average ability, any man with every requisite but genius itself, who, though diligent and adaptative to circumstances, can find in the general work of his profession the income of an average doctor or lawyer. There is a veteran whom we are reminded of, each of whose books has had a sale of more than five thousand copies, while some of them have exceeded fifty thousand--which is nearly forty-nine times more than many volumes reach--and we know that he, with this exceptional success and by the industry of a lifetime, has not accumulated the smallest fortune, though he has been fertile and has lived within five thousand dollars a year. The ground is overcrowded, the struggle for place is exhausting, and the man who is wholly dependent on his profession for bread and butter finds himself elbowed and pushed against, not only by competitors of his own class, but also by many to whom literature is a recreation, a source of distinction, or collateral to some other business, and not the obdurate necessity it is to him.

The literary gift is too often a faculty which exists by itself, and is not conjoined with versatility. Weary though he may be, the author has no alternative, and must drag along in his profession, feeling that he were better out of it, and yet that he is useless for anything else. His future is held in the Acherontic depths of his ink-pot, and all he is capable of winning is in solution there. He thinks of the theatre in his despair, and may find comfort in the reflection that one substantially-successful play brings its author more money than a poet or historian receives for all the masterpieces of his life. Harry Esmond mentions with pride somewhere in his history that a play of his writing had the honor of being represented two or three times; and in the colonel's day dramatic literature was scarcely more profitable than other kinds of writing. Now, however, a new play, produced at a metropolitan theatre with the elaborate mounting and excellent acting that are customary, is considered a positive failure if it is withdrawn at the end of a month, and it is not unusual to see two or three pieces filling the whole season. The metropolitan successes are also wanted by managers in other cities; and from one manuscript, about one-third the length of an ordinary novelette, the author may derive twenty thousand dollars or more in two or three years.

The play holds out the one possibility of a fortune which literature without transcendent genius offers, and though the chances of winning are known to be few, the prize is so splendid that it is tried for by men of every intellectual calibre. The poet, the essayist, the novelist, the newspaper editor, the newspaper critic and the newspaper reporter, the scholar and the airy _raconteur_, have all written something for the theatre, and visions of the auditorium filled with a well-dressed, perfumed, smiling throng, of the lights, the applause and the excitement, have given speed to their pens. Beyond its profitableness the drama has another and powerful fascination for its author. Presupposing that it is competently acted and mounted with the exquisite taste and completeness of detail that we see at such theatres as the Union Square in New York, the manuscript is touched as by a magician's wand and from a collocation of words becomes a living, visible world, and a beatific, almost deifying, consciousness of creation fills the author as he contemplates the embodied offspring of his brain.

The poet, the essayist and the others have written their plays, inspired and accelerated by dreams of a sweeter success than they have known before, and if the reader should ask what has become of them we might answer by begging him to consult the theatrical records and find out how many new plays by American authors have been produced during the past ten years. The end, if not the history, of nearly all of them is the same. They have been received by the managers with a degree of attention measured and varied according to the positions and influences of the persons submitting them. Some of the authors have written to theatres praying for a hearing, and have waited in vain for an answer; others have succeeded in getting their manuscripts into some manager's hands, and have been promised a decision which has been put off from month to month, until at the end of a year or so they have been glad to recover their work, though it has not been read; a few have had their plays accepted, and are only sanguine at the beginning of each season to become disheartened before its close as this or that success of London or Paris has occupied the theatre and deferred the production of their own work, which is effectually entombed in an office-safe: these live on wearily, ever in sight of a desired object to which they never come nearer; and, finally, there are a limited number who, impatient of the delays or rejected at houses where alone production would be worth while, have withdrawn their plays and given them to secondary managers or "stars"--a course fatal to both pecuniary and artistic success.

After many vicissitudes all the manuscripts usually come home to their parents, who do not repeat their experiments, but, looking back on their dead ambition, shake their heads with an air of great sagacity when play-writing is mentioned and point ominously to a pile of leaves in some corner of their desks. Years ago, when we told a literary veteran who had written tragedies and other trifles for the Bowery in its palmy days that we were engaged upon a drama of our own, he vehemently protested against the folly. "Don't do it!" he cried. "They will tear your heart out," referring to the managers, who certainly deserve small credit for the way they treat the literary men who submit work to them. Nevertheless, in all the leading theatres there is in some part of the building an office, usually undiscoverable by the uninitiated, where plays are actually read and sometimes accepted. It is a small apartment guarded by an attendant, who instinctively knows to whom the manager is "at home" and to whom he is not--who has a welcoming smile for the critic of the big newspaper and an impatient shrug of disparagement for the author who calls for the twentieth time to see if his play has been read. There is a bunch of programmes hanging from a nail in the wall, and there are proofs of lithographic window-sheets and posters strewn upon the desks and chairs. The newspapers are filed, and copies of the latest editions are so profuse that the effect is more journalistic than theatrical. But the conversation is assiduously "professional," and there is a somewhat unusual familiarity of address among the persons present, who call one another by their Christian names. Sometimes an actor or actress attached to the theatre looks in, or a playwright who is in favor, or a provincial manager, or a fashionable "man about town" who in some occult way has obtained the _entrée_ of the managerial sanctum. It strikes one that for an overburdened business-man the manager is very affable and patient. This is only during his moments of leisure, however, and when a play has to be discussed, the characters to be "cast" or engagements to be made none but members of the staff are admitted.

Not more than a dozen original plays by Americans have been produced at the three principal theatres of New York during the last six years. The most notable of these have been _Pique_, by Mr. Angustin Daly, who was his own manager; _The Banker's Daughter_, by Mr. Bronson Howard in collaboration with Mr. A. R. Cazauran, the former an experienced playwright, and the latter assistant manager of the theatre at which it was produced; _The False Friend_, by Mr. Edgar Fawcett, an established literary man; and _Conscience_, in collaboration, by Mr. A.E. Lancaster, a critic of distinction. It is worth observation that in each instance the author was in some measure intimate with the theatre and possessed some knowledge of stage-effect, the requirements and exigences of the companies for which he was writing. Literary ability alone will not make an acting play, even when it is wedded to the constructive faculty and dramatic instinct; and we often see a novelist whose characters are forcibly contrasted and whose climaxes are thrilling failing in stage-work, because he makes the fatal mistake of supposing that it can be done by the same methods as his stories. In a novel the author may be explanatory and analytical, telling how, why and wherefore, while in the play he must be concise, suggestive and synthetical, making his characters define themselves by emotion and action rather than by words.

What we have said, perhaps, shows how many things a candidate for dramatic honors requires to succeed. He must have literary ability of course, and not only must he have a nervous style, but he must be able to invent a plot of sustained interest and strong situations, and possess the faculty of prevising the effect what he is writing will have when seen by an audience under very different circumstances and in very different surroundings from those of his study.

But neither the difficulties nor the limitations of the market frighten away the aspirants. One theatre receives more than two hundred manuscripts a year, some from persons of education and literary training, from whom acceptable work might come, but many of them from men and women who are wholly disqualified for any sort of literature by the completeness of their ignorance. Border dramas, with five or six scenes to an act, are submitted to establishments where only elegant comedies and emotional dramas are produced, each with one scene to the act; high-flown tragedies in blank verse come begging at the doors of the theatre where airy musical pieces are a staple; and plays with all parts subordinated to that of a "star" are sent in to houses which depend on their stock companies and the carefully-balanced distribution of characters. It is not alone orthography and syntax that many of the people who write plays are deficient in: they lack the simple common sense which directs the man with chickens for sale to the poulterer and the farmer with potatoes to the grocer's. Perhaps this is why the manager makes a wry face when a new play by an unknown hand is mentioned to him. Such a mass of impracticable stuff is submitted to him that he loses heart and faith in turning it over. But generally it is turned over, and if among all the chaff one grain of wheat is found there is rejoicing, and the author finds himself elect.

The reader is usually a member of the executive staff of the theatre, who selects from all the manuscripts sent in those that are at all feasible, which are then read by the manager or assistant manager, and either rejected or held for future consideration. A few strong situations, a novel character or a brilliant piece of dialogue, though set in unequal surroundings, will often delay the final judgment, for the manager is as apprehensive of throwing away a good thing as of accepting a poor one, and if he sees a gleam of power he is reluctant to decide upon it without cogitation. He mentally revolves the question to see it from every point, and wonders if after some "fixing up" the play might not prosper. Should it prosper, it would be much more profitable to him than to the author: should it fail, it would involve a loss of several thousand dollars and injure the reputation of his theatre. While he is debating the matter, which is a serious one to him, a piece may be filling his house and he may have already selected the play to follow it. He looks over the new work at his leisure, and invites the criticism of his principal assistants; he considers its feasibility in reference to the peculiarities of his company, and if there are parts which his actors cannot fill he inquires whether others are disengaged who could fill them; he considers it in reference to the scenic capacity of his house, and the very size of his auditorium has some influence upon him, for what tells on a small stage often fails on a larger one. He is cautious, and dismisses the subject for a few weeks, perhaps to think it over again at odd moments--at his club, over his dinner, in his _coupé_ or at his office. Meanwhile the play is lying on his desk or in the safe, and an outraged author is consuming himself with disappointment and bitterness, demanding an answer from day to day and being put off so often that at last he insults the manager and reclaims his manuscript.

But, supposing that the author is patient and lets the matter take its necessarily tedious course, and that finally the manager accepts the play and signs a contract for its production, it may still be months or years before an opening can be found for it. At some time or other a date is fixed for it, however; it is underlined in the bills and mentioned to the critics, and the practical work of building up the acting drama from the manuscript is now begun. One of the staff revises the stage-directions and marks the exits and entrances of the characters, having a diagram of the stage with its various doors before him; and when he is finished all the "business," on the technical completeness of which the author, especially if he is callow, has probably flattered himself, is cut out. The phrases which are prolix or redundant are dropped, and a character may be swept out of existence by the stroke of a pencil or a new one added, a comedy-scene written in to relieve the gloom of some serious business, or an element of pathos introduced where the shadows are not deep enough. It is a fearful ordeal for the author, but the prospect of having the curtain lifted upon his work buoys him through it, and he discreetly keeps his temper, though unconvinced that all the changes are for the better. We are speaking of a tyro. When the playwright is a veteran his stage-directions are likely to be valuable, though few plays reach the public unaltered; and in some instances the suggestions of an inexperienced man are serviceable.

The revised manuscript is then given to the copyist, a subordinate actor usually, who replicates it, and alternates each page of writing with a blank leaf, for a purpose to be explained anon. The cast is meanwhile exercising the brains of the manager. Which member of his company will best suit this part? and which that? As in the choice of a piece, the soundness of his judgment is put to a severe test, and that verisimilitude and identity between the actor and his impersonation wherein art has its fulfilment are only attained by a critical perspicuity which places him on a much higher plane than the mere commercial purveyor of amusements. His opinion of the most effective distribution of parts will probably not be shared by the actors themselves if each member of the company has not a great opportunity allotted to him; which of course is impossible. The vanity of human nature is inordinately developed in the bosom of the player, who loves to linger on the stage and to be central and preponderant. A popular leading-man is not easily replaced, and when he feels that he is more or less indispensable he is apt to be as arrogant as he is vain, and begrudge his associates the attention or applause of the audience for a moment. Even the withdrawal of a minor person is felt in a company whose members have been drilled together for some months and whose abilities are harmoniously balanced. But the manager is firm and at the same time conciliatory: he is like a patient father with wayward children, whom he controls by mild arts when despotic commands would be ignored or combated.

The cast being decided upon, two more gentlemen are introduced into the managerial council: one is the scene-painter and the other the "property-man." "I want for the first act," says the manager to the painter, "a scene in the diamond-fields of South Africa; for the second, the exterior of an Elizabethan house; for the third, a handsome library; and for the fourth, a conservatory. The diamond-fields must be shown as at evening, the house and the library must be characteristic of the home of an old and prosperous family, and the conservatory must be as fine a 'set' as you can paint." After listening to these instructions the painter submits a number of plates from which he thinks he may gather a definite idea of the exact requirements of the play: a picture from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_ may give a suggestion of what is wanted for the scene at the diamond-fields; the illustrations of a work on the baronial homes of England may include such a library and exterior as would suit; and perhaps for the conservatory he submits a hasty water-color drawing of his own or a design from some book on architecture. "That's the thing," says the manager, pointing to selections from these, and he picks out the plates which fit his idea of what the scenes should be; and the artist gives him an estimate of the cost of production, specifying the quantities of lumber, canvas and paint that will be required to build up a diamond-gully, the Elizabethan mansion and the conservatory. Perhaps the estimate is too large, and is reduced, but the management is apt to be over-generous rather than stinting, and more probably the artist is instructed to prepare his models with few limitations as to cost.

Now the property-man is consulted. The rocks that will lie about the stage in the diamond-field scene, the cataract in the background, the implements of the miners, the tents and the wagons, the furniture in the library scene and all the appurtenances of the conservatory, are to be made or procured by him and disposed of on the stage before the performance begins. The rocks are to be of papier-mâché, and the cataract is to be simulated by a revolving drum of tinsel or glass beads with a strong light upon it. It is his business to construct them and the artist's to paint them. Every article used on the stage is in the property-man's charge. The crowns of kings, the cross of Richelieu, the whip of Tony Lumpkin, the bleached forehead of Yorick, the bell which the victorious hero strikes before having the discomfited villain shown to the door, and the fat purse with its crackling bank-notes and jingling coin which the honest but virtuous clerk refuses in the face of temptation,--all belong to the property-man's department. The demands on his ingenuity and research take him into every kind of shop in every quarter of the city. He has dealings with ironmongers, milliners, upholsterers and merchants of curios. The magnificent and costly suite of carved oak in the library--scene, which is not veneer but substantial furniture, and the most trivial objects--a handbag or a hat-rack, perhaps a baby for some "side-splitting" farce, whatever the play calls for--he must secure and put, night after night, in the exact place which the stage-directions have prescribed. Each new play requires, of course, some new articles, and the accumulated stock is uniquely various from which the accoutrements of princes and potentates, beggars and nobles, soldiers and lackeys, priests and highwaymen, the riotously anachronistic material of a fancy-dress ball, may be gathered.

The scene-painter is provided at the preliminary consultation with a "scene-plot," wherein the exits and entrances, the doors, windows and other openings necessary in the action of the play, are specified: at the same time a "property-plot" is handed to the property-man, enumerating the articles involved in the action; and we cannot better illustrate the diversified character which the latter sometimes have than by quoting from the plot of _French Flats_, which was produced in New York last season. In the first act the property-man is required to provide a double step-ladder, a long low trunk, a lady's hatbox with a hat in it, a cane and an umbrella, a very large basket filled with china and crockery, a Saratoga trunk, a bundle of clothes tied up in a sheet, upholsterers' tools, a roll of carpet and "the portrait of a female with a hole through the eye." For the same act he also has to provide "a crash of wood and a noise outside," a very large bouquet for Mariette, two vials for Vallay, a law-book for Bonnay, a comb and curling-iron for Martin, a switch of hair and a box of pills. Among the properties required in the second act are two pianos, objects of _virtù_, a broom for the Baroness, tongs and a tray for Vallay, a photo album, two small combs for Riffardini the tenor, a feather-duster, French bank-notes and two Catalan knives for the Marquis. The third act requires large blue spectacles for Pluchard, a paper cap for the painter, paint-brushes and paint-can, a newspaper for Billardo, "crockery to break," plenty of writing-materials and money for Billardo; while the fourth act, the scene of which is the parlor of the tenor, requires bric-à-brac, a hand-glass on the table, musical parts, newspapers, a tuning-fork, a wig and beard, a whip for the Marquis, and several wreaths of laurel. As we have said, each article has an appointed place in which it must be put by the property-man, and we all know the embarrassing consequences of any negligence of his, as when the leading actor sits at a table to sign away his birthright and can find neither the pen nor the ink which the property-plot calls for.

One other person has to be considered in mounting the play, and that is the machinist, who builds up the framework of the scene and constructs the mechanical appurtenances, such as the flight of steps down the rocks in the diamond-gully, the galleries in the library, the balustrade in the conservatory, and all the doors and windows. The artist, the property-man, and the machinist are together the architects of the drama, and when they have been fully instructed--when the artist has his plot, the property-man his, and the machinist his, which is the same as that of the painter, and when the painter's models have been approved by the manager--the actors are called to hear the play read. A word in parenthesis is necessary here as to what the scene-painter's models are, for the term is misleading. He has a small stage, upon which he paints and sets each scene exactly as it is to appear on the larger one, except that it is on the reduced scale of half an inch or less to the foot of actual space; and the miniature, which is called a model, serves to guide him in his work and to give the manager a preliminary glimpse of what the finished scene will be.

Somewhere against the wall in that mysterious precinct which in other days attracted the wits and gallants of the hour, who met and exchanged familiarities with the players that were not always sweet, and which in this better epoch is reserved for the use of the persons for whom it is intended,--somewhere in the "green-room," where the actors gossip, or put the finishing touch to the rouge and pencillings on their faces, or adjust their costumes, or rehearse their parts while waiting to be summoned before the audience, there hangs a board or a glass case in which the official notices of the management are exhibited; and one day a written slip is pinned or pasted in it which contains these words: "Company called for _A Lame Excuse_ at 10 A.M. Monday," _A Lame Excuse_ being the supposititious name of the new play. There have been rumors of "something underlined" among the actors already, and when the call is made the nature of the work, who of the company will be required in it, what parts there are, and the probabilities of success, are discussed with much volubility. Should the author be a beginner whose connections with the stage have hitherto been impersonal, and who yet has had that desire to affiliate with its practitioners which belongs to adolescence and inexperience, he now has an opportunity to acquaint himself with as many as he will care about knowing. _One_ introduction puts him on affable terms with a crowd of "professionals" connected and unconnected with the theatre at which his play is to be produced, and before long he is _en camarade_ with various little cliques that gather around the small tables of bier-saloons, cafés and club-houses after theatre hours. Between the first call and the reading particularly he is sought and questioned as to the characteristics of his play. The leading lady, who is pretty and cultivated, sends him an invitation to call upon her, and receives him with flattering attentions when he appears. The leading man invites him to a nice little dinner. He has cocktails with the low comedian, lunch with the "eccentric comedy lead" and oysters (late at night perhaps) with the soubrette. His unprofessional acquaintances should also be mentioned, for they take many pains to be remembered. Young Potter, who is athirst for notoriety, and who, with maledictions in his contemptible little heart and fulsome compliments at his tongue's end, will cringe before any man who happens to have the public by the ear, trusts that our author is not offended by anything he has written in the obscure little paper with which he is connected. Bludgeon, who is such a hypocrite that his unusually large nose is like a partition-wall between the smiles that he shows and the scowls that he conceals, slaps the author on the back and with effusive goodwill congratulates him, and declares that nobody could be worthier of success, though in reality Bludgeon detests him, believes the management is going to the dogs, and is already endeavoring to invent biting phrases for his criticism. The potentialities of the new playwright bring him innumerable offers of services and pledges of cordiality. If he is not wise the promise of success will intoxicate him by its fumes before the cup that contains the fruition reaches his lips, and it may be well for him if he is not over-confident, for the draught may prove bitter enough.

On the morning appointed the company assemble in the green-room, sauntering in with unbusiness-like irregularity and addressing one another with that familiarity of which we have before spoken. There is a good deal of banter and some scolding. The author grasps each member of the company by the hand as they enter: he is pleading and ingratiating in his manner, and after some delay he sits at a small table and begins to read his manuscript, or if he is too nervous the manager or the assistant manager reads it, and he scans the faces of the actors with a touching desire to find some responsive thrill as his best points are reached and passed. A faint smile of the low comedian as a grotesque line is read, a murmur of the leading lady at some climacteric phrase of the heroine's, or an ejaculated measure of applause from the leading man over some strong emotion in the principal part, yields gladness to him--he foresees how much stronger they will be spoken in character with dramatic enunciation--and as the lines which he has thought effective fall unnoticed a gloomy apprehension possesses him. At the end of the reading there is an interchange of civilities, a private chat between the manager and the author, and the little green-room, which has the mildewed appearance of a lodging-house parlor from which the sun is shut out like a conspirator, is left to the ghosts that float in the empty spaces of a theatre during the daytime.

Soon afterward the cast is announced, and then the unreasonable desire to be central and preponderant, to fill the play with himself, that affects the best of actors as well as the poorest, leads to a turmoil which is only quieted by the diplomacy which is indispensable in holding together the jealous elements of a stock company, wherein pre-eminence in individual branches must be subordinate to the maintenance of a general excellence. At the same time that the cast is announced each actor is provided with his part and the cues which precede each of his speeches, copied from the manuscript. The first rehearsal is "with parts"--that is to say, the company are allowed to read the lines from the copies given to them--and while this is in progress the manager has the complete play with the alternate blank pages before him, upon which he writes whatever alterations seem desirable; and already, though none of the accessories are used, the preliminary exercise, so to speak, shows that some speeches which have seemed striking in the reading do not "go" well when spoken by the actor. This rehearsal "with parts" is amusingly incongruous to the spectator. The leading actor reads in an ordinary conversational tone, "My heart is filled with a hatred which checks my utterance, and though you see me now penniless, trodden upon and in these rags, Fate may have in store for me that which will make you humble before me;" while, instead of being at all impoverished or threadbare the leading actor is dressed in a fashionable walking-suit and has every appearance of prosperity. Again, the leading lady sits with complete indifference in a chair and swings her parasol and chats with her neighbor while one of the gentlemen opposite to her reads a declaration of love in a sing-song voice from a roll of paper in his hand. Another member of the company has the lines, "Here for centuries the Mordaunts have lived the simple and honorable lives of English country gentlemen; here they have been born; here they have died; and among them all not one of them has ever done aught mean or base. Here, in this grand old hall, a reputation has been built which the proudest of nobles might envy;" and should the spectator, following the wave of the actor's hand, look for the hall to which the speech refers, he would only discover the stage before him, with no scene set upon it, with the wings and the "flats" stacked up at the rear, the company gathered in the centre, and a few gas-jets paled by the rays of daylight issuing from a yellowish window. The heroine at another point, wandering, as the lines suppose, about the ample gardens of the Elizabethan house at twilight, bids her lover come and hear the soft echoes of the cuckoo, but it is only the knocking of the machinist's hammer and the voices of the property-man and the scene-painter, who are working in the "flies" high above the proscenium, that are audible, and not the whistle of a bird. The incongruity which amuses the stranger to the theatrical arcana is unnoticed by the actors, whose profession is made up of anomalies.

When a play has been actually rehearsed and all the arrangements have been made for painting the scenery and procuring the properties for it, the manager is not likely to abandon it: his self-interest commits him to it, and the author may usually feel assured that at last his work will be seen by the public. But so difficult is it to judge from the reading of the manuscript what the effect will be when the lines are distributed and spoken by many different voices that more than once an experienced manager has found to his cost, at a second or third rehearsal, that some play which has gone thus far in preparation will not do. The author is very much to be pitied in such a case: the disappointment is not an ordinary one. The first rehearsal of _A Lame Excuse_ confirms the manager's favorable opinion of it, however, and a few days later another is called "without parts;" that is, the actors are expected to have learned what they have to say. The rehearsals are then continued from time to time, and at each something is added in gesture, tone or movement which strengthens the representation. The toil, perseverance and discipline which are entailed cannot be imagined by one who has not traced the progress of a new play at such a theatre as the Union Square. Whenever it seems that the most has not been made of a line or a situation it is repeated again and again. The "business" is gradually improved, and the author sees the company working with greater fluency at each of the twenty or more rehearsals which are given. Somewhere about the eighteenth rehearsal a demand is made upon the artist, and he promises to have the scenery ready in a few days.