“Been to the theater lately, Mr. Bacharach?” Mr. Koch called out.
“No,” said Elias, little foreseeing the effect of his announcement; “I don't go to the theater much. I'm not very fond of it.”
Immediately, from all directions, there was an outburst of astonishment and indignation; for in New York the theater has no patrons more ardent or devoted than the-German Jews.
“Oh, Mr. Bacharach!”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Gott in Himmel!”
“Oh, you don't mean it!”
“Vail, if I aifer!”
And so forth, till the poor fellow was blushing to the roots of his hair, and would have liked to bite his tongue out. Mr. Koch took up the cudgels in his behalf.
“Oh, come,” he shouted, “don't make Mr. Bacharach feel as though he'd brought the Tower of Babel crashing around his ears. He's got a right to his opinion, hasn't he? I understand the way he feels. In fact, I feel about the same way, myself. I go to the theater a good deal, I don't deny; but that's because there's nothing else to do. When I get home at night I'm fagged out, and I want a little amusement, and I take my wife and go to the theater. But all the same, I'm free to say that the theaters here in this town are about as poor as they can make them, and no mistake. Melodrama and burlesque—that's what they give you. Good, honest pictures of life—where'll you find them, I'd like to know? Now and then you get a big star—Salvini or Booth; now and then you get an old English comedy; but it's the average that I'm talking about, and I defy any man to say any thing in defense of that. You folks, you go to the theater, the same as I do, because you haven't got any thing else to do. But an intellectual young fellow like Mr. Bacharach, he don't need any outside amusements of that sort. He'd rather stay home, and think; wouldn't you, Mr. Bacharach?”