CHILDREN OF THE PANTOMIME.
In the great city of London one of the pleasures and delights of the merry Christmas season, to which the children look forward with almost as much eagerness as to the advent of Santa Claus, is the pantomime.
What a fairy-land is revealed to youthful eyes by this holiday amusement! All the stories of Mother Goose become living realities. Jack and Jill roll down the hill; Tom, the piper's son, suffers no end of misfortunes as a punishment for his theft of the pig; Little Jack Horner eats his Christmas pie; and in company with all these nursery heroes are wonderful crowds of all-powerful fairies, who by a wave of their wands give birds and beasts human intelligence, and render pots, kettles, and pans animated. This gay assemblage appears in fairy grottoes glistening with brilliant colors, sylvan dells flooded with soft moonlight, and meadows on which fairies trace the magic ring and weave the figures of their mystic dance.
The other side of the picture is less radiant. All these fairies with spangled hair, these animated kettles and saucepans, these birds and beasts which dance and hop about in such mirthful fashion, are the little children of the poor, who in this way seek to earn a few shillings for the sick mother, or the starving baby brother or sister, in the dreary and desolate apartments which these poor families call home.
Weeks before Christmas the parents of these children, and often the children themselves, beg to be enrolled in the infantile army needed for the pantomime. The number of applications is so large that the first selection is made by height alone, no child over four feet being received for examination. The smaller the child, the better, so long as it is old enough to learn the duties required of it. The children thus selected are then placed in a line, and told to put forward their left feet and hold up their right hands.
Strange as it may seem, there are many poor children so ignorant as to be unable to do this simple thing. All these are rejected; for a child who does not know its right hand from its left would probably never be able to learn the feats required of it in the pantomime. When the final selection is made and the parts assigned, a crowd of the prettiest and most graceful are set aside for dainty little fairies and elves. Others are destined for hideous little gnomes, for animated vegetables and utensils of all kinds, for cats, monkeys, beetles, and other creatures, while to the most intelligent are assigned more important parts.
Then begins the task of training this youthful band for its work. The drill-masters are, as a rule, as good-natured as possible under the circumstances, but they are very strict, and require the most implicit obedience to their directions. Many of these little boys and girls grow very weary in the work of learning to act like fairies and elves, to jump about as starlings, tomtits, or monkeys, or to march around as kettles, saucepans, cabbages, and other odd figures which go to make up the dramatis personæ of a pantomime.
To the children, clad in soft warm garments, who watch all this brilliant show, everything is beauty and happiness. The little audience, which gathers with delight to witness the glittering spectacle, knows nothing of the labor and suffering which these less fortunate children have endured before everything could be in readiness for the grand holiday performances. The Christmas holidays for them are a season of work and anxiety.
The home of the poor children of the pantomime is not like the homes of the readers of Young People, warm and comfortable, and at Christmas-time gay with wreaths and branches of evergreen, with gifts from Santa Claus, and with dinner tables groaning under the weight of great turkeys and steaming plum-puddings; but it is some dismal little room up flights of rickety stairs, where the cold wind blows through the cracks of the uncarpeted floor, and where want and sorrow and misery are always present.
These children rise to a day of toil. Honest little hard workers, many of them do their best to assist the tired and weary mother to keep the dismal home as clean and comfortable as possible. The hour for the pantomime approaches, and clad in their scanty garments, these little ones hurry away through the snow to appear as sparkling fairies, carrying delight to thousands of hearts. Where are the fairies who bring delight to them? When the performance is over, they leave the glistening grottoes, go back to their comfortless homes, and sleep only to rise again to new toils and anxieties.
There are poor children everywhere. They are the most numerous in great cities like London and New York, but there is scarcely a village so small where some can not be found. Christmas is near. Will the children blessed with happy homes, and kind parents able to gratify their slightest wish, leave these little ones with "empty stockings" on Christmas morning? Remember how small a thing will make their eyes sparkle with pleasure; and when your own Christmas gifts are showered upon you by loving hands do not fail to learn by happy experience the grandeur and truth of the words of the Lord Jesus: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."