It is 5 o’clock by the time they reach their homes, where their mothers, worthy concierges or washerwomen, are waiting for their daughters to peel the potatoes for dinner. They have only time to wash, to hurry through their dinner, and return to the opera in time for the first act. A coryphee, for instance, will play a page in the first act, appear in the second, and take part in the ballet in the third. During the fourth act she remains in her dressing-room, and does a little crochet, but hardly has she done a few points before the call man’s voice is heard in the lobbies: “Ladies, the fourth act is finished.” She changes her costume, scampers down the stairs, and rushes upon the stage. The curtain falls. The coryphee regains her dressing-room, puts on her ordinary clothes, and leaves the theatre. It is nearly 1 o’clock when she reaches her home, and, after eating a bit of bread and cheese while she undresses, she creeps into her narrow bed. Her day’s work is over.
Hard Labor for Girls.
Indeed, there is but little poetry in the existence of the smiling and light-footed dancers whose pirouettes afford so much pleasure to the old gentlemen in the orchestra stalls. They begin often at the age of 5 or 6 in the class des petites, and then every day in the year they practice and toil and chatter and caper until from rats they become successful figurantes at the rate of one franc a night, members of the first and second quadrilles, coryphees and sujets. Then at the end of their first three years’ engagement begins a period of bitter grief. For then it often happens that, instead of encouraging them and giving them a decent salary, the administration of the opera chooses its stars from among foreigners.
A Borrowed Mother.
The danseuse always has a mother; if the fates cut the thread of the days of her natural parent, she will borrow, hire, or buy a new one. It is an article of primary necessity. The mother holds her daughter’s shawl in the wings, watches her dance, covers her shoulders when her pas is over, and offers her a little bottle of cold beef tea to quench her thirst and keep up her strength. Take for a sample mother Mme. N., who begins her day as a fruit seller at 6 o’clock in the morning. She mounts into her little cart and trots off to the Central Market, where she lays in her provision of cabbages, turnips, carrots, and salads. Then, on summer evenings, about 8 o’clock, a tall lackey enters her shop, and Mme. N., dressed in her Sunday best, gets into Mons. de P’s victoria and takes a ride in the Bois de Boulogne with her daughter. Mme. N. is a living encyclopædia, a gazette of the market and of the court.
French Female Beauties.
If you enjoy nice photographs of female beauties, here is your opportunity. For only ten cents, we will send to you forty photographs of the most charming French girls in tights. Each photograph is mounted on a card and the lot of 40 card photos makes an exquisite, unique and petite collection. Ordinarily, you know, pictures of actresses in tights cost ten cents each, but here we make the remarkable offer of forty separate card photographs. Send ten cents, silver or stamps, to Keystone Book Co., Box 1634, Philadelphia, Pa., or to the firm from whom you purchased this little volume.
Incident in a Dive.
One day when the writer of this was visiting one of the low dives of Paris, in company with a detective, the latter said to him: