“The royal road to a news-boy’s heart is to rant in style.
“Versatile Eddy and vigorous Boniface are the lads, in our day, for the news-boys’ stamps.
“Ranting is out of the female line, but Bowery actresses have a substitute for it.
“At the proper moment, they draw themselves up in a rigid statue, they flash their big eyes, they dash about wildly their dishevelled hair, with out-stretched arms and protruding chins they then shriek out, V-i-l-l-a-i-n!
“O, Fannie Herring! what a tumult you have stirred up in the roused pit! No help for it, my dear lady. See, there’s ‘Horace,’ standing on his seat and swinging his big blue cap in a cloud of other caps—encore! encore! And the pretty actress bows to the pit, and there is more joy in her heart from the yells of those skinny little throats than from all the flowers that ladies and gents from above may pelt her with.
“The bill of fare for an evening’s entertainment at the Old Bowery is as long as your cane, and the last piece takes us far into the night—yet the big house sits it out, and the little ones sleep it out, and the tired actor well earns his pay.
“I’ll not criticise the acting—a great part of the community thinks it’s beyond the pale of criticism—this peculiarity of tearing things to pieces, and tossing around ‘supes’ promiscuously.
“And another thing, those little ungodly imps down there have a great appreciation of virtue and pathos. They dash their dirty fists into their peepers at the childish treble of a little Eva—and they cheer, O, so lustily, when Chastity sets her heavy foot upon the villain’s heart and points her sharp sword at his rascal throat. They are very fickle in their bestowal of approbation, and their little fires die out or swell into a hot volcano according to the vehemence of the actor. ‘Wake me up when Kirby dies,’ said a veteran little denizen of the pit to his companions, and he laid down on the bench to snooze.
“‘Mind yer eye, Porgie,’ said his companion, before Porgie had got a dozen winks. ‘I think ther’s somthen goen to bust now.’ Porgie’s friend had a keen scent for sensation.
“As I came out, at the end of the performance, I again saw ‘Horace.’ He had just rescued a ‘butt’ from a watery grave in the gutter. ‘Jeminy! don’t chaps about town smoke ‘em awful short now’days!’ was the observation of the young philosopher.