These variety performances are attended by all classes. The respectable mechanic and his family, the professional man and his family, the thief, pickpocket, and prostitute, are all mingled in one common mass, the only division being the prices in different parts of the house. And here, as everywhere, drinking goes on incessantly and forever. Waiters move about through the audience, taking orders for beverages, and men and women drink and guzzle, and men smoke during the entire performance. No matter what else stops, the flow of beer never does. It is very like Time in this particular, constantly moving.
The life of a variety actor is a very busy one after eight at night. If he has any popularity at all he has engagements at three and even four theaters. He sings one song and responds to three encores, then throwing himself into a cab he is driven to another and to another, the time of his appearance at each being fixed to a minute.
AN ENGLISH IDEA OF A GOOD TIME.
Singular as it may seem, the wretches who sing the most idiotic songs, of the “champagne Charley” kind, compositions so utterly and entirely stupid that one wonders that any audience would endure them for a minute, are the most popular. They sing them in extravagant evening costumes, in the most doleful and melancholy way, and call themselves “comiques.” One of them, probably the nearest approach to an idiot of any man on the English stage, makes from two hundred to three hundred dollars a week, and is in demand all the time.
INTERIOR OF A VARIETY HALL.