The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 21, 1897, Page 19

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL. SUNDAY, F EBRUARY 21, 1897. 19 A NIGHT WITH THE GODS AND GODDESSES OF TJHE TEN-GEN] GALLERY sk 4 3 , |follow him through all his evil doings and The Professional Stage Villain's Woeful Lot—Hisses, Hoots and deers Are His Deserts at Morosco's. s temu SR N faioihen | little Indians gather outside the theater Some Melodramatic Realism Not on the Boards | ana"wait for fhe viliain aail b appears on the street ana then they jeer him as he \F tbe man who plays the villain at| l7 Morosco’s is not paid a higner salary han any other actor in t then the eternal fitness of th been subserved. For that villain is a man who deserves ame cast | gs has not = income an PR o - b were it [on dat guy an’ you'll see him trun her | has brought about the downtall of the one | is enhanced, not alone by his own acts, | on the play and the actors, are these peo. | makes his way homeward. ‘n’orxlu,ie: 5 "\::pr::‘uld ‘:c pii:‘l:‘herl“n f:;.ol“,’:r“l?:l‘}rll’:‘l,\“a:etfoffl\e]:—0‘:\"’:‘! “*bounc- ‘do"n putty soon.” | they so much despise. Great placards on | but by the good deeds of the hero and the | ple who look upon the stage from sueh | For even the children hate the villain at his professional sphere Le is an Ishma- | ers.” who, armed with their sharp sticks, But the play progresced and Butler | the Il announce that such loud mani- | heroine as well. When the good young | lofty perches. They have a most keen up- | Morosco's. elite—a creature despised, hooted and | keep tie component parts of the rabble in | failed to show bis band as “de villyen.” | festations of disapproval or approbation | man clasps his long-lost sister in his arms | preciation of the patheticand the humor- = = T hissed at—one everlastingly held up to | something resembling order. | “Chimmie” became mors and more per- | are prohibited, but the regular patrons of | and exclaims, “I will find the man who | ous and they pass easily from muttering The Newest Light. scorn and to whom th ences are unknown, and w tion is execration and vilifying abuse. Itis on patron of a peculiar charac- ter that the fir iccess of the house largely depends, - age that the managem find it profitable to c ndits of audi- por- This class of patrons of the Grand know the location of the different numcered seats of the house as well as the ushers | do. The first galleryt h heir favor- ite seats and are emphatic in their demand | them; when they fail to get them they | are deprived of a moiety at least of their | evening's pleasure. plexed and disturbed, and was evidently | suffering because of the uncertainty of his own mind. The chmax was reached when Butler saved the life of the heroine. “Dere, didn’t I tell yer!"” exclaimed Chimmie’s partner, triumphant in the consciousness of the superiority of his own perspicuity, as the curtain fell upon the thrilling scene. *“Didn’t I tell yer he was de hero. He was de hero all de :ime, an’ I knowed it."” “Ab, de big suff!” said disgustedly, as he made for the lobby to find consolation in a *‘coftin tack.” One of the most thrilling climaxes ever witnessed there was afforded by one of the emotional patrons of the lofty galleries. In the play then running a little blind girl was a central figure. The villain, by arts and wiles only known to such as he, had gained the confidence of the child whose life he had been hired to “Chimmie,” | the house have no respect for these, and hiss the villain and cheer the hero in su- preme di-regard o! the printed rale. These people fairly revel in the melo- {drama. To them it is all true, all real, all | intense. They believe it all. The actors | to them are appearing in their true char- | acters and all the scenes and incidents to them are genuine. Here is no place for the scoffer. Woe betide the luckless indi- vidual who here essays to show his supe- rior world heroine is in peril orat any other inop- | portune moment. If he escapes without | being done personal violence he will be fortunate. With some ol the younger portion of the audience the belief in the genuineness | of the creations of the melodrama is very | strong, almost fierce. The other night two newsboys were discussing the private | character of the villain of the play. iness by laughing when the | | ““Ah! I tell yer, he’s mean, jest nacherly | wronged you or I'll die!” the rallery ex- claims, ““Huily gee, dat’s bully!” but an additional moiety of hatred goes out to the villain, Every little neroic act of the | | players adds to the unpopularity of the | villain. The gallery judges not of a play- er's ability; it judges him according to his role. | For the actor who plays the villain bere there is no glory in the eyes of the people of the lofts, no matter what may be his | histrionic talent. If the text of the play | writes him a villain, a villain in all things he must be, and that is all there is about it. The nheroic deeds of the hero and heroine, the faultlessness of the good voung man, the queerness of the hayseed and the comicalities of the comedian all serve to increuse the enmity of the top- lofters for the bad man of the melodrama. When a villain takes a climax with un- | | usval force and thereby displays unusual | talent, his only reward is a storm of cuarses for the viliain to hearty laughter at | Extreme interest attaches to the ac- the fuu of the comedian, or to tear'ul and | gounts which have been received from gulping silence when villainy and comedy | Japan of recent experiments by Professor give place to pathos—when the lights are | Muroaka of Kioto. The swarms of glow- | destroy. Not wishing to murder the poor, | little innocent outri-ht owing to a whole- | some respect he pretended toentertain for mean,” said one who was championing hisses. The greater his force, the more | the genuineness of the play. vociferous his denunciation from the gal- He's all rite on the | | | | AH-HA! FoI particular class that the villamn m ! villainous and that he must be hissed and He jeered; yea, and sometimes stoned. must be so unequivocals as ¢emon hatred within the bosoms ¢ g0ds of the gallery; he must, to be cess, make them hate almost with | the hatred that infuriatesa mob to toe | degree when hundreds of m med | by passion will beat down one poor, de- —and the man that does , if he does not receive, a The enjoyment of the people of the galler- iesis not co to the mere s e of vi- sion, as they not on They drink in during the two and a half hours they spend In those packed lofts; asin- to them as the charms of Syrinx to Pan, the wine-cup to the drunk- ard or flattery to a wom For the insig- nificant sum of 10 cents these men and women enjoy thrills of emotion that many | blase men of millions would squander their fortunes to experience Desire, Fear, Hope, Joy, Grief, Love and Hatred come to these occupants of 10-cent seats in the opera-house on Mission street | during the little while they sit upon the | uncushioned benches and look down upun | the mimic stage below. All the emotions | which the players essay to portray are | real to them, and so It comes about that | thevillain of the p the most despic- | able personage on earth to these queer folk of the playho the men, the | women and the children. | Monday night is & great one at the | Grand, when one views the house from | the upper gallery and allows himself to | be swept along, so nearly as may be, with the rushing current of sentiment on which the habitues of the lofts are borne. | The appetites of these gourmands of tha melodrama have been whetted for day: by the flashy posters, over whose picted scenes they have gloated for hours, and as early as half-past 6 o’clock on Mon. day night they gather in hundreds before the gallery entrance and clamor for a mittance. Men, women and cuildre crowd and jostle each other in their efforts to get near the big doors; but, while every one In the homogeneos throng is there ready and willing to *'pro- tect” his or her rights with physical | force, if mecessary, there is generally a gooa-natured crowd on the whole. The scene when the gallery doors are | thrown open is almost indescribable. | There is 2 inad rush for the box-office and a wild clamor for seats and positions. No | great artist of the stage has ever been flat- | tered by such a mad rush for tickets of | sdmission to their entertainment! The | AN ELEVATED VIEW OF THE VILLAIN | seats is extraordinary. | days azo thata man in Stockton paid 40 cents fora teiegram to the management | known him and hailed him only as the | | his first appearance upon the siage on this | | | LED A6AINI ““Hey, there,” piped a young gamin to the man in the box-office, as he shoved a y paw grasping two dimes over the houlder of a man in front of him toward the ticket-seller's window, “Gimme six, sev’n an’ ate, four B, will yer?” “‘Gone,” said the man in the box-office, after a glance at the sheet of paper in ont of him. “Well, den,” piped the gamin, without a moment’s hesitation, gimme tree, fo’ an’ five, tree A,” and receiving the seats ot second choice, he departed, par- tially mollified. The favoritism of the people for certain It was only a few of the house, requesting that a cert. 25- cent seat, which he named by number, be ! reserved for him. After the rise of the curtian the gal- | lery gods ‘“lay for”’ the hero and heroine first and then for the villain. But with w c nflicting emotions! Un- stinted applause await the former upon their entrance, while derision, scorn and emphatic disapprobation 1s the portion of the latter. The galleries have stuaied the posters and the programmes, and they know the characters of the players before their entrance. Sometimes they are led astray, but not often. An amusing incident happened in this connection a few nizhts ago. Fred But- ler, who had been playing in villainous roles at the theater for more than a year, was, owing to the exizencies of the occa- sion, cast in a heroic partin a new play. The gallery gods were misled. They bad ain, and that he could be anything but a double-dyed and loathsome monster was bey their ken, and so when he made; occasion he received the storm of hisees that had for 8o many previous nights been his portion. But soon the audience of the loft began to wonder. This man was doing things hitherto unheard of in a v.1- : | ay, Chimmie,” said one gamin in the front row, who, with his head between his hands, had been studying the queer ac- of the ex-villain for some minutes, to his chum in the seat beside him; “‘say, dat guy ain’t de villyen! He’s de hero. See?” b, whatcher givin’ us!” responded Chimmie” contemptuously. ‘He's de villyen all right. Don’t yer know now- thin’? He's a foxy guy, doncher see? He's jest a-playin’ it low down on de gel, now; be’ jest a-stringin’ of her. See? Jest youse keep dem peepers o' yourn glued the gallows, this demon of darkness con- trived to take the little one into a mill where, misied by him, s.e should run up against a buzzsaw which would promptly do the rest, as the villan desired. This part of the been reached. The little one was groping her way to the purported awful death and the gallery was breathless. little by little the child approached the whirring machinery. Every nerve in the 10-cent seats was strained. To their occu- pants the moment was one of agonizing suspense. Suddenly a piercing, awful shriek rang through the house and a woman in the upper gallery fell forward on the bench before her unconscious. She had supplied a climax that playwrights may struggle in vain to produce, and the curtain fell with the scene as written un- completed. The men of the galleries, for the most part, at different stages of the piay make their hatred of the viilain known by mut- | tered curses or lusty hisses and catcalls, or by shouts and whistling when the hero | —— FACIAL EXPRESSTONS §N THE GALLERY ~—— .. .. _ vlay had | inch by inch, | ““Naw, he ain’t. outside. Didn't he zive me a nickel onci? | | Guess I know,” retorted the other. | “Dat’s all rite about his givin’ yer de | nickel. He was jest up to some of his| foxy tricks an' he'll trun ye down yet if he gets de chanst. Ye'd better give him | de marble heart. Do yer think any man 1 | | can do tings as mean as he does down derean’ bi all rite! Not in her life. He's | mean.” The gallery zods have carried this feel- | ing of intense bitterness toward the villain | | of the play to such a point that it becomes | | & frenzy with them and drives them to im- | | passioned deeds. More than one actor, | forced to play in this unscrupulous rote, | | has aroused the enmity of the people of the galleries to such an extent that they | | have laid in wait for him outside the thea- | | ter and thrown stones and mud at him. | | Itis only a little while ago that a crowd | i of these queer theater-goers chased a par- | ticularly hated villian for a block or more afier he left the theater, pelting him with | missiles. This feeling of animosity for the villain | leries. Hated, despised, hissed at, without an encouraging word or hand-clap, the villain must stalk through the play alone, an Ishmaelite. When the gallery starts to hiss a villain the bouncers may as well keep quiet and let the gods have it out. There is no stopping the siorm of condemnation and no cifort is now made to do so. Intne | old days, when Morosco’s was on Howard street, there would be times when the audience would put a temporary stop to the play by “calling down de villyen,” | but the gallery of the present house is not Intensity prevails, however, from the rising of the curtain to its final drop, save during the intervals between the acts. As | s0on as the gods and goddesses reach their coveted seats they are all attention, and nothing can divert them from the scene | being enacted down below them. | With their heads betweea their hands | they sit and stare steadily upon the stage, except when they straighten up in order | to give free vent to their whistles or hisses. They are free in their running comments | | | | DISGOVERY OF PRIMEVAL MAN T was from Egypt that the races to © knowledge of letters and science; and now it seems that the great problem of the age—how long has man inhabited the earth ?—is likely to be solved by a study of the remains of antiquity in Egypt. In 1895 Flinders Petrie and Quibell dis- covered on a plateau thirty miles north of Thebes remains of paleolithic man, which proved that the spot had been the home of a race of people whose presence in Egypt had not been suspected, and which | bad nothing in common with the Ezyp- tians. Mr. Petrie’s investigations were continued in 1596 by M. Jacques de Mor- gan under the auspicesof the Khedive; they confirmed the English explorer's theory that before the Pharaonic period Egypt had been inbabited for a period of time which must have covered centuries and may have embraced thousands of years by a prehistoric race which at- tained a high degres of civilization, though it was an entirely different civili- zation from that of the race which built the pyramids and whose fantastic record is recounted by Herodotus, Diodorus and Manetho. M. de Morgan starts from the period when Egypt became fitted for the abode of man. It arose from the waters during the miocene age, when there was no Nile and no Red Sea; then at the close of the pliocene the land subsided, the ocean coy- ered the Saharan desert, and its tides washed cliffs beiween Assouan and Om- bus. This period was followed by an up- lift of the earth, in which the Red Sea was formed, emptying southward, and the great Sabaran Ocean became an arid desert. Simultaneously, the melting of equatorial glaciers discharged floods of dildial water northward and scooped out the bed of the Nile. It is in such diluvium beds that the oldest traces of human life sre found in all parts of the world, and that life doubtless first appeared when that diiuvium was deposited in Egypt. The oldest objects which demonstrate the existence of man are flint implements found in the quaternary drift. Such im- plements M. ae Morgan dug up in the neighborhood of Thebes and Abydes. Many of them were highly finishea, pol- ished, and carved with images of serpents and qu:drupeds, which bear no analogy to Egyptian hieroglyphs; and the learned which we belong borrowed their first | Frenchman argues that man first appeared in Eeypt when the race which fashioned these objects was in the barbaric stage. How long ago was that? In the face of it the problem appears in- soluble. But from data which he has col- lected M. de Morgan reckons that the rate of increase of aititude in the Nile Valley owing to the deposit of silt brought down by the river is about ten centimeters, or four inches. per century, so that the base of any building erected in the Nile Valley at the time the Gizeh pyramids were con- structed must now be twenty feet below the surface of the surrounding country. It would seem to foliow that the depth at which primitive flint instruments are found below the surface of the soil in s place where the deposit of the diluvium has not heen disturbed by water flow or windstorm will prove the key to their age; though of course such piaces are rare, and in the case of objects which date from very far back the depth must be great. Egyptian chronology has always been and still is & matter of dispute among Egyptologists. If we accept Marietia Bey’s opinion that King Menes reigned about 5000 B. C. seventy centuries must have elapsed since his time, and the level of the soil of the Nile Valley must be nearly twenty-four feet higher than it was then. The skeletons and ornaments and flint implements of tne race which pre- ceded him must lie at least that distance below the surface; and if, as it is not un- reasonable to assume, that race of which M. de Morgan has discovered remains had been flourishing several thousand years before Menes, the excavation would bave to be proportionately deeper. Yet there is nothing in Morgan’s finds that is new to archwologists. They con- sisted of flint blades, with the cores from which they were detached, hammers, hatchets, scrapers, saws, sickles, spears, arrowheads, mostly of flirt, but some of diorite, serpentine and hematite, and with these knives cut and carved with re- markable skill. On one of them, which is now in the Gizeh Museum, there bas- relief of a lion chasing gazelles, which is really a work of art and has nothing Egyptian about it. The burial of the dead was quite dif- were laid upon the back with the arms crossed over the lower part of the chest. The prehistoric corpses were inclined slightly to the left side, with the legs bent upward. In one of the necropo- lises skulls were found on a stone slab; they do not materially vary from the skulls of modern races. In another figurines representing human beings en- veloped in a cloak or demino exhibit a marked contrast to the similar objects found in Egyntian tombs, Fiinders Petrie said of this race that ‘“‘the men were very tall and powerful, with strong features, a hooked nose, long- pointed beard and brown wavy hair, as shown by their carvings and bodily re- mains. Thereis no trace of the negro | type; in general they seem allied to the Lybians and Amorites.” A remarkable discovery very lately made is that the bodies were generally ! mutilated before burial. One large and important tomb showed from skulls placed between stone vases on the floor a separate heap of loose bones of several bodies together, and around the sides human bones broken open at the ends and scooped out. It is evident that an- thropophagy had preceded burial, and that the primeval race was given to can- nivalism. A marked development in the size of the legs shows that they were a race of hunters. In the ancient prehistoric days the Nile was probably fuli of islands which were the resort of wild beasts. Mr. Petrie thinks that the new races were Lybians who invaded Egypt from the west when the waters of the Sahara dried up, and, strange to say, he infers from their carvings that they were con- temporaneous with the Pharaohs of the seventh dynasty. M. de Morgan assigns them a much greater antiquity. With better reasons than can be drawn from their flint implements and their carvings, he supposes that when t.e Sahara waters flowed off into the Mediterranean in con- sequence of the uplifting of Northern Africa tne inhabitants of Lybia naturally migrated eastward and established new homes in the valley of the Nile. When this was we are not in a position to de- termine, but it was probably long before the earliest of the monarchical aynasties. Jon~ BONNER. ferent from the form observed in Pha: onic Egypt. In the latter the mummi A crocodile takes eighty seconds to turn completely round. | will cr: WHEN THE VILLAIN GETS IN HIS Dt lowered and the music is played in minor | | chords. It is well that this is so. Did not these other emotions serve as a safety valve the | soul of the gallery god would soon be | searea by his burning hatred of the bad | man of “de piece.” But what the gallery cherubs love better | | than anything else that can be presented | on the stage 15 a scrap between the good | voung man and the villain. The play that embraces such an incident is sure to bz a success from the point of view of the gatlery. Of course tbe villain must be in- gloriously whipped. That's a necessity. | At such a time the gallery becomes wildly excited and all kinds of gratuitous | advice and encouragement is shouted to | the good young man. “He's got'im now!” an excited gamin as the good younz man seems on the point of finishing the villain. “No, he aint!” another will yell. “Yes, he has!” will come from another, | while from all parts of the house will | ascend shouts directing the good young man “to hold on to ’im.” or to “'smash’im | in de chaw,’ while some of the gods | thirst so for the blood of the bad man that | they advise their favorite to ‘‘chew his | ear.” | When the hero with a rattle of pistol | | shots lays the villasin low the gallery | heaves a satisfied ‘‘Ah!"" and prepares to leave the nearest place to heaven they | know. This **Ah,”’ sighed forth from tue | very heart of the gallery god, signifies his | | greatest satisfaction. It is always thus with the gallery gods. They have a never-failing word of cheer | for the hero; an ever ready hiss for the | | villain. For some reason the gods and goddesses | | of the gallery do not seem to entertain the same degree of hatred for the female vil- | 1ain of the play that they do for the vil- lain, and in this a condition that prevails in the ordinary walks of life in politer society is reversed. | To the gailery people the bad woman of a play is more a creature of their contempt than of their hatred. She is merely an adjunct necessary to the machinations of the viilain, and, in their | contemplation of the chief monster, she fades into insignificance from their point of view. Even at the matinees for children, with many of those in attendanceso young | that they have to climb into the seats, the | villain of the play is an ogre, a bu bear. a creature to be despised. They know him | when he first enters into the play; they SAY, WASN'T DAT GREAT WHERE DE FELLY &IVE DE | The rounded limbs, the bold, d | Soft ADEY W OKIK worms which adorn and illuminate the June nights in that neighborhood sug- gested to the professor that they might be made to yield X rays. As a matter of fact, they yiel ted something altogether new in the of light. Three hundred glow- worms were shut up in a box with a sensitive plate, covered with cardboard ana metal. An impression was pro- duced where the cardboard lay on the sensitive plate, but not where it w:s cut away. When the metal plates were removed and only perforated card- board used, an impression was produced only through the perforations. The card- board seeined t nction effect’” on the ray. e most striking property of these s seems 10 be that their penetrative power is imparted to them oy filtration through paver, cardboard or metallic plates. The unfiltered glow- worm light exerts no photographic effect whatever. It behaves like ordinary light, and may be easily reflected, refracted and polarized. The glow-worm rays show regular reflection, and so far as can at present be ascertained also refraction and polarization, but no action upon fluores- cent screens or upon electric discharges. The active light comes from ail parts of the body of the worm and penetrates its wings. The Wayside Booth. She danced upon the wayside. Idlers stood To answer back her smile with mocking smile. Pilgrims and priests went by with lowered hood— Beggars and rulers—women, fair and good, Hurrying their steps, with aownward glance the while: But children paused frankly and unafratd— Their grave and innocent sweet eyes were stayed To watch the wonder of the whirling lace, . lovely face, bosom bare, the tempting, maddening grace. dimpled hand in hand, shey stood, and when wide glance caught their sweet, heart. piercing gaze As a pure lily grew her cheek, and then She danced for them—she was & child agatn. MADEL . BRIDGES, in Judge. The Her Tacks are from a quarter to a half inch, though, when accidentally stepped on, this length seems to be mulitipliea by 100. A pound of the smallest sized contains 16,000 tacks. The old-time bobtailed mule cars, now disused in most cities, were about ten feat in | ngth; the electric cars of the latest build are from forty to forty-six feet. VILLUN A L SWipE LIKE Dlsl.'