Miss Glaser, before the run of the opera was over, however, found her part in "The Chieftain" somewhat hampering, and she was pleased enough when Pierrette in "Half a King" placed her back in the ranks of the joyous and captivating soubrettes. Light-hearted, too, was her part in "The Little Corporal," a rôle which travelled all the way from the long skirts of a court lady to the not too tight trousers of a drummer boy in the French army.
In "The Little Corporal" one could not help but notice how great an influence Mr. Wilson's clowning methods had exercised on Miss Glaser. Mr. Wilson, however, was artistic in his fooling, and was not given to overdoing the thing, which was not strange, for he had been at it a good many years.
Miss Glaser especially worked to the limit the old "gag" popular with variety "artists," of laughing at the jokes on the stage as if they were impromptu affairs gotten up for her especial benefit. She did it rather well, although she did it too much. Perhaps because the jokes were funny and one laughed at them himself, one liked to think that Miss Glaser—some time before, of course—did see something funny in Mr. Wilson's remarks, and that she laughed at them now because she remembered how she had laughed at them at first. Marie Jansen used to laugh, too, when she was with Mr. Wilson, and her laugh was a wonderful achievement,—a thing of ripples, quavers, and gurgles. And this coincidence suggests a horrible thought. Possibly Mr. Wilson himself was to blame for these laughs. Possibly he stipulated in the bond that his soubrettes should laugh early and often at his jokes as a cue to the audience. In the early scenes of "The Little Corporal," regardless of laughs and all else, Miss Glaser was captivating, and her first song—it was something about a coquette, as I recall it—was a fetching bit of descriptive singing.
During the season of 1899-1900, Miss Glaser played Roxane in "Cyrano de Bergerac," and Javotte in "Erminie."
CHAPTER XII
MINNIE ASHLEY
MINNIE ASHLEY.