"Section I.—Every person who shall obtain board or lodging in any hotel or boarding-house by means of any statement or pretence, or shall fail or refuse to pay therefor, shall be held to have obtained the same with the intent to cheat and defraud such hotel or boarding-house keeper, and shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county gaol or city workhouse not exceeding six months, or by both (such) fine and imprisonment.
"Section II.—It shall be the duty of every hotel and boarding-house keeper in this State to post a printed copy of this Act in a conspicuous place in each room of his or her hotel or boarding-house, and no conviction shall be had under the foregoing section until it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the Court that the provisions of this section have been substantially complied with by the hotel or boarding-house keeper making the complaint.
"Approved March 25th, 1885."
I had, counting principals, chorus, ballet, and orchestra, 160 persons under my care, and by the terms of the hotel notice just reproduced the penalties incurred by my Company, had they quartered themselves upon innkeepers without possessing the means of paying their bills, would have amounted in the gross to £16,000 in fines and eighty years in periods of imprisonment. It was evidently better to bivouac in the open than to run the chance of so crushing a punishment.
A deputation of the chorus waited upon me, saying that as their artistic career seemed to be at an end, it would be as well for them to take to the sale of bananas and ice creams in the streets; whilst others proposed to start restaurants, or to blacken their faces and form themselves into companies of Italian niggers.
Some of the female choristers wished to take engagements as cooks, and one ancient dame who in her early youth had sold flowers on the banks of the Arno thought it would be pretty and profitable to resume in Frisco the occupation which she had pursued some thirty or forty years previously at Florence.
All these chorus singers seemed to have a trade of some kind to depend upon. In Italy they had been choristers only by night, and in the day time had followed the various callings to which now in their difficult position they desired to return. All I was asked for by my choristers was permission to consider themselves free, and in a few cases a little money with which to buy wheelbarrows. I adjured them, however, to remain faithful to me, and soon persuaded them that if they stuck to the colours all would yet be right. For forty-eight hours they remained encamped outside the theatre. Fortunately they were in a climate as beautiful as that of their native land; and with a little macaroni, which they cooked in the open air, a little Californian wine, which costs next to nothing, and a little tobacco they managed to get on.
From the "Morning Call."
"The scene outside the Grand Opera-house looked very much like Act 3 from Carmen—about 100 antique and picturesque members of Mapleson's chorus and ballet, male and female, were sitting or lying on their baggage where they had passed the night. As these light-hearted and light-pursed children of sunny Italy lay basking in the sun they helped the hours to pass by card playing, cigarette smoking, and the exercise of other international vices. One could notice that there was a sort of expectant fear amongst them seldom seen in people of their class."
What above all annoyed them was that they were not allowed to go to their trunks, an embargo having been laid not only on my music, but on the whole of the Company's baggage. One of them, Mdme. Isia, wished to get something out of her box, but she was warned off by the Sheriff, who at once drew his revolver.