It is so hot up in the loft."
The child turned her head
And very softly said,
"Well, dear little brother,
I am glad you brought him, mother."
"Yes, dear, so am I;
But it is hard to carry him from so high."
THE PASSING SHOW.
The month has been made notable by a high moral monument in the Actors' Club, headed by Augustin Daly. We said moral; we mean theological, for that was the true aspect of the commotion. It seems that some friend of Robert Ingersoll proposed the name of that noted pagan for membership to the club that Edwin Booth has so handsomely housed. This came to the ears of the pious Daly, and immediately his theological soul animated his theatrical body to an indignant opposition. Daly polled the pious body of actors. "What!" he said, "shall we recognize and indorse this dreadful infidel, this unbelieving son of Illinois—have him among us as an associate, to distil his poison of unbelief in our midst? Perish the thought! Let us rally round our altars and our fires [of the Actors' Club], and die, if necessary, as martyrs."
The grotesque part of this lies in the fact that while the pulpit denounces the stage, the stage on the same ground assaults Bob Ingersoll. It reminds one of a comic scene perpetrated in Sheridan's "Rivals," where the master bangs the man, and the man, in turn, kicks the many-buttoned page.
Now, the Actors' Club is the same as any other social organization, and has the comforts and pleasures found in the intercourse of its members, its main purpose. In London and Washington, the only two places on earth where clubs flourish in perfect health, another and more important object is to get the good things of life at cost. These are clubs of a social sort. There are others that have political purposes for an end, but these combine such objects with the more important features of the mere social organizations. To secure the latter, wines, cigars, and viands at cost prices are what John Bull aims at, and persists in carrying out to the letter. Without this your club is a delusion and a snare.
Now, if in the formation of these social centres it is necessary to have a view to a man's respectability as well as his entertaining qualities, the first requisite of an applicant is to be a gentleman. A whole coat, a clean shirt, and gentlemanly views, if any, are necessary. What the member's views may be on any abstract proposition is of no import whatever. He may consider polygamy allowable; he may even believe in that governmental extortion miscalled "protection," or in mind-reading, and yet be acceptable as an associate. The most fascinating club-man we ever knew was a little gone on morus multicaulus. Another had a way of getting up the Nile, and it was almost impossible for his friends to get him down again. When, in his talk, he sailed up that classic river, his hearers, like the Arabs on its banks, "stole silently away."
We have never heard that our modern pagan was anything but respectable, and we are told that socially—if he can be got away from Moses—he is rather entertaining. If the rule applied to Robert the heathen were the measure used by clubs generally, there would not be one left with a quorum in the country.
Nor will it do to apply to this noted person the rule recognized by Mr. Booth's orphan asylum, that the heathen is not connected with the stage. He has won fame and fortune from behind the footlights. We never enjoyed a comedy so much as that given us by the heathen in his lecture on "The Mistakes of Moses." We laughed an hour "by Shrewsbury clock," not so much at what the heathen said, as at seeing a corpulent gentleman in a dress suit prancing about the stage assailing Moses. Now Moses has been dead some years. He has no lineal descendants that we know of, unless Moses and Sons, dealers in antique raiment, can be so considered; and of the two thousand people packed in that theatre there probably were not six that had ever opened the Old Testament or that cared a straw for the dead lawgiver. And yet the heathen seemed animated by a personal feeling, as if Moses had, like Daly, on some occasion blackballed him.
He tore Moses all to pieces; he attacked his knowledge of astronomy; he doubted his correct knowledge of ark-building. He said Moses was defective as to ventilation. The fact is, that when this corpulent, unbelieving son of man got through there was not much left of the eminent Hebrew. But it was a stage performance all the same, and put Robert at the head of low comedians. Hence he is qualified for an association with brother-actors.