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"Buffalo Bill at Moore's."

A large audience in the dress circle and a packed one in the gallery at Moore's Opera House last night witnessed the evolution of "Buffalo Bill's Pledge" to its realization, and many points brought out tumultuous applause. In the first act Buffalo Bill appears to prevent an intended lynching. In the second act he digs out a man who had been buried alive in a shaft. In the third act he captures a murderer, and in the fourth he clears up a mystery and makes it plain to the audience, and thus redeems his "pledge" in the allotted time, "Twenty Days." Incidental to the piece are exhibitions of Buffalo Bill's dexterity and accuracy in rifle shooting, tricks by Buffalo Bill's trained donkey, a war-dance and singing by six Indians, a cornet solo by Frank Thompson, and a vocal and instrumental olio by Jule Keene and Sallie Adams. In many respects the piece runs much after the fashion of other pieces he has given here. From a critic's standpoint there seems to be too much of incident in Mr. Cody's pieces, and the characters are huddled in strange contrast to the prairie freedom of view in which they supposed to move. But it is not to be denied that each separate incident is quite within bounds of reality on the frontier. The trouble is not with two incidents, but with the treatment.

And it seems as if the incidents of the border must yet be the groundwork of the best American plays, when they are written. Either the writer has not yet appeared to deftly weld these stirring actions together, or they need the touch of time to soften the hardness of their outlines, Mr. Cody realizes this better himself than his dramatists, for he has never yet been entirely suited with the plays that he has paid for, and is still on the look-out for some one able to produce the play in which he would like to appear. The writer may not come in his life-time, but come he will.