If there is a ballet or a burlesque crowd or comic opera chorus in the theatre the scenes in their rooms will be of a more diversified nature. The girls in addition to making their faces pretty, must have their limbs so shapely that no fault can be found even by the most cavilling of the gentlemen who crowd up behind the orchestra while the house holds a host of female attractions. The rage for limb exhibitions rendered it necessary that some means should be devised to hide the calves or poorly turned ankles of the creatures whose limbs are displayed. Happily the symmetricals, as padded tights are called, were hit upon and now you cannot find an unsightly piece of underpinning in any combination, and even the poor ballet girl who does page's parts or helps to make up a crowd for $6 a week, will, if she has sense and taste, go early to the dealer in theatrical goods and have symmetricals made to suit the exigencies of her case. These artistic accessories of feminine fictitiousness are leggings or tights woven in such a manner the thickness of a deficient thigh, the pipe-stem character of a calf, are filled out with silk and cotton into shapefulness and beauty that Venus de Medici herself would not be ashamed to make a display of. I heard a story about an operatic artist who for a long time refused to play parts demanding the exhibition even of a fraction of a limb, and all because her lower members were too attenuated to attract anything else but ridicule. Lately she has found her way to the pad-maker's and now can present as pretty an ankle and as round a calf to the audience as sister artists who have more flesh and blood in their composition. Men as well as women patronize the pad-maker and any actor of the mashing persuasion who may have had to keep his bandy legs in wide pantaloons heretofore can now burst forth upon the sight of his adored in all the gorgeous loveliness and perfection of an attractive anatomy.
MARIE ROZE.
CHAPTER VIII.
WITHIN THE WINGS.
IN THE GREEN ROOM.
The green-room, except where stock companies prevail—and there are not more than three or four in the United States now—has passed out of the shadow of the rigorous rules that sometime ago were posted here, and that had to be observed. By this I do not mean that rules have been entirely done away with behind the scenes; but travelling companies are governed by their own rules, carry their own stage manager, prompter, etc., and the only persons that local green-room rules could apply to now-a-days would be the four or five poorly paid young girls who, in their desire to go on the stage and become stars, start and generally stay at the bottom of the ladder, where they are paid pitiful salaries and continue to "mash" wandering minstrels, or the equally poorly paid and badly treated members of some male chorus. These girls usually spend the lengthy leisure a performance gives them sitting demurely on chairs in the corner of the green-room until the call-boy sends them word that they are needed to fill up some silent gap in the entertainment. Beyond these there are few to be found in the green-room during a performance. Occasionally an actor will drop in to pace the floor as he mumbles his lines over, or an actress, who is tired from standing in the wings, or on the stage, will hurry in and drop to rest on the sofa. The side scenes, or "wings," as they are termed, are the places in which to find almost everybody who has any business around the stage of a theatre. Under the stage, in a "music-room," the musicians may be found when they are not harassing the audience with some unanimously discordant air.