"The rehearsals would be frightfully confusing to an outsider. During the last rehearsal, before a piece of this kind is put on, the stage looks like a perfect pandemonium. The chorus is being put through its final drill on one side, the actors are practising their entrances, exits, and cues on the other; behind, the scene painter and his assistants are daubing away, and the trap man and gas man are both working away in their line."
"What kind of girls were they for the most part?"
"Oh, they came out of factories and all that; they could make from $6 to $8 a week on the stage, a good deal better than they could do at their old business. We used to have such a lot of applicants then we could pick out a pretty good crowd. Some of them were very nice, respectable girls, but the associations ruined most of them. A good many of them were rather fly when they first came in, and besides being crooked would put on any amount of lug among their companions outside. After playing in the ballet two or three weeks for $6 or $7 a week, they would go around and say that they were actresses, playing an engagement at the Opera House, but they didn't know exactly how long they should stay there. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they talked about starring it in another season; that's what all these fly-by-nights at the theatres do now. Why, do you know I have had people come to me and ask what part Miss So-and-So was taking, and on looking into the matter I would find that she was a ballet girl."
"Can't you tell me of some cases of girls who have a little romance about their history?"
"Well, possibly, but to one behind the scenes there is little enough of the romantic, I can tell you. I remember another case of a girl, one of the prettiest and best behaved we had—quite a modest little thing, in fact. But she got picked up by a middle-aged rake, and went to the bad. I do not know her whole story, but I know she used to meet this fellow after the performance very often. After a time she stated in confidence to one of her companions that she was married to him, and I have no doubt that she thought she was. She left the theatre after a few weeks and went to live with him. But I guess it didn't last long, for I saw her several years afterwards in one of the lowest travelling companies I know of, as vile and broken-down a wreck as you ever saw. If there is any romance in the lives of these girls, this is generally the style of it."
"Do these girls ever rise in the profession?"
"Oh, yes, some of our best actresses rise from the ranks. It would make a cat laugh, though, to see the first time they have a little speaking part in a regular drama. A girl can get along all right as long as her individuality is concealed in the ranks, but when she has to step to the front and say a few words, she waltzes up as though she was walking on eggs. She looks as if she would like to fall through the stage, swallows and hesitates, and puts you in doubt as to whether you ought to laugh or pity her."
Here is a writer who takes another view of the affair: "To the uninitiated male citizen the period of supreme interest in affairs behind the scenes is the period of a grand ballet or spectacular show, where a hundred or two girls, who have undergone an examination of their faces, shoulders and limbs, and been accepted as presentable upon the stage, don tights and make their bow to the public. It is not always easy to secure the required number of girls who have the requisite qualifications for an appearance in tights. Girls who have never been on are extremely bashful about making their first appearance. The majority of the girls who answer the call for 'ladies for the ballet' are shop girls, girls who take work to their homes, girls suddenly thrown out of employment, poor girls who have no other way of honestly earning a dollar. There are a few who have been in the ballet a number of times before. They have come to look upon it very much as a business. They knit and sew and crochet and do fancy-work behind the scenes during the stage waits. Their pay is liberal compared with what they can earn even in ways that are considered more respectable, and they have the novelty and excitement, which, of course, are something of an attraction in themselves. Considerable judgment has to be exercised in the selection of those who aspire to the costume of a pair of tights and trunks or a gauze dress. It is a lamentable fact that all ladies are not plump and symmetrical, and for those lacking these charms there is no door to the ballet stage. Once accepted as a constituent part of a pageant which is to disport itself before the foot-lights, the figurante has a wide field for conquest open to her. It's man's weakness to be forever 'getting gone' on the favorites of the foot-lights, to believe them all beautiful and luscious as they seem from the front of the house. And so it is that the watchman at the stage-door and call-boys divide between them many a dollar for carrying in billet-doux from the great army of mashed masculines. 'Another sucker dead gone,' mutters the call-boy as he pockets his liberal fee as mail-carrier. Perhaps the fair object of the masher's admiration 'won't have it,' but there are among her sisters those who, to a promisingly liberal and attractive stranger, would not let the lack of an introduction stand in the way of their graciousness. ''Sh,' they say to the call-boy. ''Sh! Don't say a word. Tell him we'll see him later. Look for us at the stage-door when our act is over.'"
THE "SUCKER."