Joe Emmett graduated from the variety theatre. Gus. Williams was a shining light on the same stage. J. C. Williamson was a variety artist. Geo. D. Knight did "Dutch business" in the minor theatres before he got to be famous as Otto. I recollect having seen Knight play Rip Van Winkle in Deagle's old variety theatre on Sixth Street, in St. Louis, and he played it well—not like Jefferson, of course, but it was his first attempt at the part, and if Jefferson did any better the first time he must not have improved very much since. This was twelve years ago. Mrs. Geo. Knight (Sophie Worrell) danced on a concert saloon stage in San Francisco. So did Lotta, and so did Mrs. Williamson. Den Thompson, whose Joshua Whitcomb is a perfect picture of the New England farmer, first tried this same character in the variety theatre, and Neil Burgess and the "Widow Bedotte" were first introduced to the public as the tail-end of a nigger-singing and specialty programme.
MAD. THEO.
Those were the palmy days of the variety show before negro ministrelsy had grown to its present enormous proportions and before plays were written so as to take in a whole variety entertainment, and under the disguise of comedy or farce or burlesque foist a lot of specialty people from a first-class stage upon an intelligent audience. The musico-mirthful pieces that began to blossom forth in 1880 made a heavy demand upon the resources of the variety houses, and within a year threaten to leave them entirely at the mercy of "ham-fats," as the lower order of this kind of talent is designated. "Fun on the Bristol" and fifty more flimsy patchworks of the same kind were sailing around the country in a short time, and every "team" that had a specialty act of fifteen minutes duration wanted a play built to fit it and went around telling friends that they guessed they'd go starring next season. A great many of them did not go, but a great many others did. The worst were left behind, and the result was poor variety programmes and in consequence poor patronage for them.
GUS WILLIAMS AS JNO. MISHLER.
I picked up a programme the other day, belonging to what was once a first-class house, and is so still in all except the standard of the performance, and found such old and worn-out features as a lightning crayon artist and a lightning change artist, both of which are so threadbare that even a ten-cent theatre wouldn't care to give them stage room. It is an easy step from this kind of thing down to the dives. The latter, as an institution, flourishes wider and pays better than places of less savory notoriety. There is such a charm to vice that even the saintly do not hesitate to linger in its neighborhood a while, and take a sniff of its pungent atmosphere. Anybody who drops into Harry Hill's place in New York, any night in the week, will see some remarkably churchy looking gentlemen standing around studying the aspect of the establishment and dwelling with melting eyes upon some of the painted faces that look up from the beer tables ranged at one side of the hall. A correspondent who visited Harry Hill's very recently, gives the following description of the place, its proprietor and its frequenters: "Harry Hill's grows bigger as its notoriety extends with years, but it never changes. It is not a bar-room, not a concert saloon, not a pretty waiter-girl establishment, and not a free-and-easy. None of these terms describe it, for it is all those things in one and at once—big second-story room, containing a bar, a theatrical stage, which can quickly be made into a prize ring, a bare space for dancing, tables, seats, a balcony, and a few so-called wine-rooms. There are always as many women as men in the place. The women are admitted by a private entrance, free. Men pass through a neglected bar-room on the ground floor at a cost of twenty-five cents. Prosperity has added a mansard roof and a clock-tower to the original structure, and Hill has taken in an adjoining building, and turned its best apartments into billiard and pool-rooms and a shooting gallery. Let us go in through the bar-room, up a winding stair and suddenly into the glare and bustle and merriment of the so-called theatre. On the stage two women are exhibiting as pugilists, with boxing-gloves, high-necked short dresses, soft, fat, bare arms, and a futile effort to look very much in earnest, and as if they did not realize how apparent it was that their greatest effort was to avoid hurting one another's breasts or bruising one another's faces.
"In the chairs around the tables are many men, and an equal number of women. The men are mainly young, and a majority seem to be country youths or store clerks. There are others evidently country men or foreigners. The women wear street-dress, hats and all. They are Americans, often of Irish or German extraction. As a rule they are not pretty, but they are quiet and mannerly. They know the cast-iron rules of the house—no loud or profane talking, no loud laughing, no quarreling, "no loving." These are printed and hang on the walls, and all who go there either know or speedily find out that the slightest breach of them results in prompt expulsion from the house. All are drinking, and many of the women are smoking big cigars or tiny cigarettes. Other women, without hats or sacques, but wearing big white aprons, serve as waiters and as bartenders.
"Harry Hill himself, a smooth-faced old man, broad, big and muscular, who shares with Lester Wallack the secret of looking twenty years younger than he is, sits at a table with a detective and a chief of police from some suburb. Hill is always there, and is ever entertaining distinguished strangers. Clergymen from the cities drop in at the rate of one a night. The women, as they come and go, stop and salute or speak with Hill. He knows them all, is kind to all, and is liked by all. He has nothing to do with them or their affairs, however, his place being merely their exchange, and their duty being merely to behave while there. The boxers bow and retire, and a young woman, who was a few minutes before at one of the tables with a broker, who was opening champagne, now faces the foot-lights in a short silk skirt, bare arms, bare head and red clogs. She sprinkles white sand on the boards from a gilt cornucopia, the music of a piano and three violins strike up, and she rattles her heels and toes through a clog dance. It is a waltz tune that she is keeping time to, and a tall young woman of extremely haughty mien and rich apparel seizes a shy and seedy little product of the pavement and whirls her round and round in the bare space on the floor. The lookers-on gather there, and a callow stripling from the country, without previous notice or formality, grasps a snubnosed, saucy-looking girl in the throng and joins the dancers.
"'Some of these girls 'as bin a-coming 'ere ten or fifteen years,' says Harry Hill, 'and looks better to-day than others which left their 'omes a 'alf year ago. Hit's hall hacordin' to 'ow they take to drink. Hif they go too farst they're sure to go too far.'