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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 16, 1898)
THE COU 1 - :, 3 IIMMIMII MIMMIMHI MMMMMIIMHIMIMIIIOIOMMIIIII I SKm-r.rssm-- hi iif iiiiTiinr ni m NHiiHt hi., The Passing Show. CATHER. nnoiioaoooooflooooooooooo novels in the world stage tude for you! J J 1124 O St, Lincoln, Nebr. Of all novels are usually the most trashy and flatly unnatural and impossible, at least American and English novels, Henry James' magnificent "Tragic Muse" of course excepted. In France, where the theatre holds a more as sured and legitimate place among the arts than here, the local color cf the footlights has been rather overworked in fiction, but with us it lias been left to the penny dreadfuls. Frederick Stokes & Co. have recently published a book, "The Barn Stormers," by Mr. Harcourt Williamson, which is an exception to this rule. "The Barn Stormers," as the title indicates, deals with the lower walks of the theatrical profession. Miss Monica Marine, the central figure of the story, is a young English amateur, gently bred and educated in a French convent, who comes to America in search of the fame and fortune which usually await even the most inferior foreign players upon our soil, but Miss Xarine is not sufficiently versed in the popular methods of advertising to command the attention of metropolitan man agers, and is forced to accept- an en gagement as "leading juvenile" in a company of barn storming pirates who are playing week stands in the rural villages of Ohio. On her way to join The personelleof Mr. Scott Ambler's company is sketched 'with cleverness and truth. There is Mrs. Scott, the leading lady, a person of mountainous physique and an uncertain tempera ment, who flies into a passion at rc hersals and shouts that her husband is trying to "queer her business." There is the poor little red-haired pianist who weeps incessantly because she is cast for "Weenty Paul" in the Octo roon and has to appear in trousers, thereby exposing the lankness of her extremities to her sweetheart who plays in the company. There is the sweetheart himself, patient, stupid and loyal, one of those fellows pecu liarly unfitted for that profession yet who often drift into it; who carries the pianist's bag and makes her fires and taps on her door when they have to make early trains, and lends her his salary to send home. There is Miss Fannie Free, billed as "The Lit tie Human Flower," and sometimes lovingly called "Fancy Free " She is the wife of the stage manager, pretty after a plebeian fashion, andgenuinely witty after a plebeian fashion, and she wears her peroxide hair short and curled. Have we not all encountered that soubrette hair in railway trains 1 mjl d H D 2 Is one of our bargains. It i2 -ru-i1it?li Hrtit?1i nf1 ik.fl.ik antique or imitation ma- 7 hog-any. You will like it. Our price is very low, only d frriif inn ",--- -"" M and we pay the miles. Send for our catalogues if you need any furniture, or ( a bicycle, or refrigerator, or baby carriage. the company at Bagara, O., she bum- and tne corri(iors of ,10tels? She ders into the private car of a Colorado magnate who finds her much too good for her prospects and eventually turns up and rescues her from the clutches of an unscrupulous and designing man ager. But this little romance is not particularly new and is really of only secondary importance. The chief in terest of the book is centered in the adventures and personelle of Mr. Scott Ambler's barn-storming com pany. It is no easy thing to write a good stage novel and faithfully preserve the atmosphere which eventually forms the lives of the people who live in it. That profession has customs technicalities, a parlance of its own of which the general public is as ignor ant as of the technicalities of music or painting. Again, the "pirates," the camp-fojiowers of the profession have mannerisms and expressions of their own, differing from those of legitimate plays soubrette parts except in the "Octoroon," in which she is permitted to play Zoe because of the great suc cess she had achieved in that role "when she was a star." Then there is" "Jim Crawford," the heavy man of the company, who has the good looks of the bar tender variety and who loves the English girl just because she is unlike anything he has ever known and because he cannot in the least un derstand her, and because she is as instinctively fine as lie is coarse. She loathes him instinctively at first, but finally gets used to liim and even par. tially accepts his attentions. As Mrs. "Williamson very pertinently remarks, the worst feature among several others is the kind of things one "gets used to ' Mrs. Williamson makes a strong point of the isolation of this little company of human beings wit'i human longings and human needs: c TRUiBTS FMAOUS f 001 was "a thing of beauty," but a pretty foot encased in a handsome pair of shoes from our stylish, well fitting stock is "a joy forever," be cause they are simply perfection. No corns, bunions or cramped feet from wearing our fine shoee Perkins and Sheldon 1129 O Street. t ( ( (' l l l i As a story of the stage "The Barn Stormers" is clever, keen, and realis tic. As a piece of writing it is slovenly faulty and amateurish. The discrim ination prompted by good taste, seems entirely lacking in Mrs. Williamson. BY TELEPHONE. Hello! Mars? Oh I Twinkling stars, How queer this seems. Our wildest dreams piajers a a patois uueMrom me icgit- stant pressure on aI1 sides from with. imate speech. ou which drives the lonely man to It would be well if all authors before seek the sound of a human voice and writing of a particular class or profes- the warmth of a human hand; drives sion would inform themselves as thor- the fine to the base. -and. alas, the bas TTni" ct.ii icr-nrtfiinlv n".t nrtli'immfl Ivt T? the con- , . J. ' "" -"""" --.. j or years, nave been to pierce those beams, mic ii Miiiiiii-s as tiiu loiiovring: "Mile oughly as Mrs. Harcourt Williamson has done. 1 confess I have never be fore heard of the lady, but so well has she her subject matter in hand, that I would almost wager she has been at sometime more or less directly con nected with the profession on the exigencies of which she is so thor oughly posted and with the people whose innocent vanities and foibles she knows so well. One whose knowl edge of the theatre is confined to its aspects in large cities could scarcely realize how faithfully the experiences of -these poor barn stormers are pre sented; the horrors of local trains and rural theatres, the small boys of the village hooting at the "show women," and the kindly condescension of the chamber maid at the hotel who says, "I always do feel sorry for you poor in tliA finof On the whole, Miss Fanny Free's remarks very well describe Mr. Am ber's company; "We're a queer lot, but we're not as bad as we look " Dickens, in "Nicholas Xickleby." admirably depicted the absurdities of a troup of provincial players; Mr. Crummels and Mrs. Crummels, who recited "The Blood Drinker" and tho poor infant phenomenon. But he gave them only absurdities, made them mere blustering caricatures of men and women. Surely even the poor barn stormer may say with the un happy Richard: "I live by bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends." Mrs. Williamson, whatever her faults of style, and they are almost past numbering, has made her barn morocco sides of her purse came to gether like a pairof sucked-in checks." "The sparkle had gone from her eyes and her hopes, as from last night's champagne." "The eggs at breakfast were rather suggestive of the Remits sance or some remote period of his" tory." It is almost incredible that an author who can make a narrative go with such sprightliness, could per mit herself, at the close of her story to say that the heroine did not reply because "her lips were otherwise en gaged." Perhaps Mrs. Williamson has lived too long among the people she describes and lias worn off the fine edge of her taste. Subscribefor The Courier 1 a year. A new and modern coffee grinder has just been put into our store, with which we are able to suit the most critical coffee makers, whether coarse gracu- Yes, this is earth! Perhaps not worth A glance, although Not long ago We thought the world was ours, you Lown Mars, tell us h'rst, Were you accursed? Did you begin With wiclwd kin Who handed down original sin? Do not decei-'e ! "Your mother Eve Was far to cute To eat that fruit?" ''Our planet all things doth pollute." Oh! I could weep. "Earth, the black sheep! The only one Around the sun Whose parents were by sin undone." Do not ring yet ? Fm quite upset. Hello! Hello! Oh! What a Wow. t . J 1L. x 1 - laieu ur iub iiuefeL puivenzinj-, or any actresses; folks is so down on you. aint stormers living men and women, ac- intermediate fineneesis desired, we can We're snubbed by Mars ! Hello! Hello! tlteyr -ua7a oe as maa as lire ir she tual and distinct characters, stamped suit you in an up to date mannw. Try Mary Day Harris. knew uncle let me associate with ac with verity and unmistakably thes- us. O. J. King. Whni ,, TX tresses." There is the provincial atti- plans. 1126 .V Street Hanson & Ever. 's.lSo " "'