In Germany They Always Hear One Thing At An Opera
Which Has Never Yet Been Heard In America, Perhaps - I
Mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet.
We always smash into it with an earthquake of applause.
The result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest
part of the treat; we get the whiskey, but we don't get
the sugar in the bottom of the glass.
Our way of scattering applause along through an act seems
to me to be better than the Mannheim way of saving it
all up till the act is ended. I do not see how an actor
can forget himself and portray hot passion before a cold
still audience. I should think he would feel foolish.
It is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old
German Lear raged and wept and howled around the stage,
with never a response from that hushed house, never a
single outburst till the act was ended. To me there was
something unspeakably uncomfortable in the solemn dead
silences that always followed this old person's tremendous
outpourings of his feelings. I could not help putting
myself in his place - I thought I knew how sick and flat
he felt during those silences, because I remembered a case
which came under my observation once, and which - but I
will tell the incident:
One evening on board a Mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten
years lay asleep in a berth - a long, slim-legged boy,
he was, encased in quite a short shirt; it was the first
time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he
was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his
head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions,
and conflagrations, and sudden death. About ten o'clock
some twenty ladies were sitting around about the ladies'
saloon, quietly reading, sewing, embroidering, and so on,
and among them sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round
spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles
in her hands. Now all of a sudden, into the midst of this
peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt,
wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, "Fire, fire!
JUMP AND RUN, THE BOAT'S AFIRE AND THERE AIN'T A MINUTE
TO LOSE!" All those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled,
nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down,
looked over them, and said, gently:
"But you mustn't catch cold, child. Run and put on
your breastpin, and then come and tell us all about it."
It was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's
gushing vehemence. He was expecting to be a sort of
hero - the creator of a wild panic - and here everybody
sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made
fun of his bugbear. I turned and crept away - for I
was that boy - and never even cared to discover whether
I had dreamed the fire or actually seen it.
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