Emma R.”
were the suggestive lines with which “General orders 197” terminated.
The aids appeared in the costumes which long theatrical usage has established as nationally characteristic. For three successive evenings, a thing of beauty and a joy for Emma enchanted and astounded throngs of visitors, and would have been continued longer had not everybody unfortunately run out of small change.
Each table was adorned by what the ladies fondly believed to be an unmistakable designating peculiarity. One ward went into business with a few yards of glazed paper and a Noah’s Ark, and reared upYE MIGHTY
ALPS. the mighty Alps. Shem, Ham, and Japhet stared blankly into futurity from the storied peaks; old Noah and his wife looked around in a bewildered manner as though wondering what the genesis they were doing in that locality, while their sheep, goats, cows, elephants, tigers, crocodiles, and whales jumped indiscriminately from crag to crag.
An odor of Swiss cheese, from the sandwiches, made the illusion perfect.
The ladies of another ward had ingeniously built a polar bear with an inner structure of rags covered by variegated cat skins. He was a little lop-sided, but didn’t seem to mind it. He stood serenely upon a looking glass glacier, with tail erect, and the Russian flag between his teeth. The 8th ward (Republic of Lima) made a splendid display of Lima beans, boiled and in soup. The aids were not afraid to say “beans” to anybody.
But the 21st ward (Isle of Man) carried off the prize. This committee had secured, at enormous expense, a live specimen of the native. He was quite docile and harmless; yellow whiskers, and wore eye-glasses. This table was the Mecca to which all the aids flocked when off duty.
Talk about your heroines of revolutionary times! Bah! Do you suppose that Moll Pitcher would have donned striped leggings, a gauze flounce, and a sash around the shoulders, and wandered around like the Amazons in the “Black Crook,” as did Mrs. Vowl of the 20th ward? Would Mrs. John Adams, the wife and mother of presidents, pattern of patriotism as she was—would she have put on spangled breeches and a turban of red, green, and yellow with a turkey’s feather in front, and trotted up and down the Foyer of the Academy with a bucket of lemon peel and water, calling it “sherbet,” and pretending not to notice the excruciating look which distorted the countenances of the unfortunates inveigled into investing in a glass and then feeling compelled to empty it? To these questions there can be but one response. You shall make it.
The result of this festival was also satisfactory to the Finance Committee and to all concerned. The ladies were encouraged to renewed efforts. They racked their brains searching for a novel idea, and when did women rack in vain? They invented a style of exhibition which produced an effect such as the world had not witnessed since the Israelites emptied out Egypt. The war trump sounded: “Gillespie” was the cry. Special orders 774 were promulgated, and that stupendous conception