273

Exquisite Retribution.

When an actor, and particularly when an actress, begins to fade so that the English public can no longer be cajoled out of its shillings to witness his or her performance, with a tremendous flourish it is announced that at the earnest sollicitation of friends on this side Mr. So-and-So or Miss Here-and-There has finall consented to come to America and give a limited number of perfomances. Then it is told how many carloads of scenery and (if a lady) how many shiploads of costumes will be brought ont; the "enormous expense" is emphasized, and the shrewed maager never neglects to keep it before the easily gulled American people that design is to present, on American soil, all the splendor which the coming performer has paralyzed foreign courts with. At last there is the cable announcing the departure of the blazing star; seven days later some steam tugs are chartered in New York harbor; some cheap bouquets are purchased; a cheap brass band is engages; some cheap people board the tugs, go down the bay, meet the incoming ship, bring her to with a bonquet fired across her bow, transfer the "meteor" to the rug, and carry it in triumph to some crack hotel. Next morning, it is wired to the remotest telegraph station on our continent that the paragon has arrived. If it is a lady, her personal appearance is minutely described. Her clothing; the glimpses caught of her ship-load of trunks; the number of times she gave up her dinner to the insatiable sea on the passage, etc., etc., until expectation not only stands on tip-toe but gets up in a chair to do it. At last the grand opening night comes, and the crowded, suffocated audience that have paid four prices for admission, have the pleasure of looking at some English cads walking through ancient roles, in costumes which had been doing faithful service all over England and the Continent for years. They do not like to say they have been sold, so they look at each other and say: "Is it not lovely?" This is wired ot the country and published in the city next morning; another batch of suckers is caught