It is a very common trick to let people through a trap-door. I was present several times in the theatre when victims were carried down to the black and uninviting space below the stage. At a benefit given to a popular treasurer in St. Louis, a well-known young man who was in the liquor business was prevailed upon to appear in the programme and was put down for a lecture on temperance. The house was crowded that night, and P—— H—— was there in all the glory and wealth of his wardrobe, fully prepared to entertain the audience for half an hour or so. One of the boys had had the pleasure—so he termed it—of hearing H—— read his lecture through, and he gave the others the cue for the fun. The lecturer's table was placed just at the edge of a trap, and a trick candle, one such as is used in pantomime, and that keeps on growing taller and taller as the clown in vain tries to get within reach of the flame, stood at one side of the piece of furniture. H—— went on the stage bowing his neatest and smiling his sweetest. He was, of course, received with "thunders of applause," and storms of the same kind interrupted him at frequent intervals. At last the place was reached where the fun was to commence. "Bang!" went a gun in the air, the thunder rolled, there was red fire, and the floor parted. Down went H—— slowly, and up went the candle. He was so terror-stricken that he could do nothing, and was left to grope his way through the darkness to the stairs. The language he used when he once more found himself among his friends was stronger and less elegant than were the phrases of his lecture. He appears at no more benefits.
A young society man now of Cincinnati was treated in the same way, a trap having been left open upon which he stepped in the middle of a play in which he took the leading part with a company of amateurs, when down he went, to the dismay of his friends, the delight of the young fellows who had "put up the job," and to his own horror. In Leadville, Col., a serio-comic singer who had incurred the displeasure of one of the stage hands, was retiring into the side scenes bowing gracefully and kissing her hand to the audience, when suddenly down went one of her pink-clad limbs through an open trap, and her moment of triumph was turned into one of ridicule, and in addition to her mortification the leg was broken. Such tricks are always dangerous and more frequently are followed by mourning than fun.
EMMA THURSBY.
Powell, the English actor, sought in vain one night for a "super" who was wont to dress him, but who on this occasion had undertaken to play the part of Lothario's corpse in "The Fair Penitent." Powell, who took the principal character, shouted in an angry tone for Warren, who could not help raising his head from out the coffin in which he was lying, and answering, "Here, sir." "Come, then," continued Powell, not knowing where the voice came from, "or I'll break every bone in your body!" Warren, knowing that his master was quite capable of carrying out the threat, sprang in his fright out of the coffin and ran in his winding-sheet across the stage.
LILLIAN RUSSELL.
The dying heroes and heroines of the present day wait to regain animation until the curtain has fallen, when they reappear in their own private characters at the foot-lights. A distinguished tenor, Signor Giuglini, being much applauded one night for his singing in the "Miserere" scene of "Il Trovatore," quitted the dungeons in which Manrico is supposed to be confined, came forward to the public, bowed, and then, not to cheat the executioner, went quietly back to prison again. A much more modern story of the confusion of facts with appearances is told, and with truth, of a distinguished military amateur, who had undertaken, for one occasion only, to play the part of Don Giovanni. In the scene in which the profligate hero is seized and carried down to the infernal regions, the principal character could neither persuade nor compel the demons, who were represented by private soldiers, to lay hands on one whom, whatever part he might temporarily assume, they knew well to be a colonel in the army. The demons kept at a respectful distance, and, when ordered in a loud whisper to lay hands on their dramatic victim, contented themselves with falling into an attitude of attention.
JOE JEFFERSON.