166

BUSH-STREET THEATER.-Buffalo Bill and
Captain Jack gave the public another of
their sensational pictures of border life last
evening under the title of Scouts of the
Plains. Their pieces are all of similar
texture, with a trifling difference of warp
and woof. The present has the enviable
distinction of being the first play with
which the redoubted scout-who is the
great star of the engagement-sought for
histrionic honors. It is fairly bloodthirsty
in its murderous purport, death being
hardly pacified with a score of soupers,
and the amount of gunpowder expended would
suffice to carry on the Turko-Russian war
for a twelvemonth. There is a slender
thread of plot, which fails, however,
to give the piece sufficient continuity to enable
the observer to remember, after having
left the theater, what it was all about;
namely, the feud of a villain of the border
with a father of a family, and the abduction
of his three daughters. One of them is carried
off when an infant, and grows up among
the Indians. The young ladies are rescued
by the scouts, who marry two of them, the
fate of the third remaining uncertain. The
play is good of its kind, and there is a
great deal of acting, also good
of its kind. The applause last evening
was liberal, much of it being
applause and laughter, as the reporters say
in parentheses when giving the speeches
of great orators. The dress-circle was wildly
effusive, and the gallery enraptured. Only
one matinee and two or three more evenings
with the heroic scouts are possible to
the people of San Francisco.