Life — November 12, 1908 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Grand Opera HESE are busy days at the Metro- politan Opera House. The stage carpenters are about to launch a brand-new, hand painted barge for Isold Mr. Hertz is struggling valiantly with the ample German mothers who are to com- pose the Parsifal chorus: Mr. Dippel’s “ Turiddu trousers which were taken in'’ for Mr. Mar- tin are now being “let out’ for Mr, Caruso: the fashionable directors are trying hard to look musical: the tem- perature of the prompter’s box has been reduced to 110°: the subscribers are wrestling with Mr. Giulio Gatti-Casazza’s un- pronounceable name: the scene painters are touching up the drops in order to make them resemble—ah! the vanity of human effort—the exteriors of palaces and the interior of caves: the understudies are doing their utmost to reach the galleries with their delicate drawing-room organs: the box-holders are secretly selling gitt-edged securities with a view to occupying their own boxes, and an army of swarthy Italian barbers are saving their tips in order once more to mount those never-ending gallery stairs and hear the hackneyed strains of Tra- viata and Trovatore. But this is not all! fashion: what of them? Ah! what miracles will greet our astounded gaze when those hipless god- desses glide inte their boxes—along about Act III—and lose themselves in the pleasure of their ping-pong téte-a- tétes! The New York Girl Show © N place of the usual Horse Show, which has now become Yr Z Tke women of so common that people in hired dress suits attend it, there will be this year a girl show. En- tries should be made as early as possible. Class A. 18 year olds will be judged according to their form, fitness, grace and cash prospects. Contestants led around the ring three times. . Class B. Bleached blondes. These are so numerous that only a few of the applicants will be permitted to compete. Prize of gold cigarette case to one who is able to carry the most hair. Prize of champagne cooler to one who makes up the quickest. Prize of box of red paint from Paris to one who talks for an hour and doesn’t say anything. Class C. Girls in harness. Americans who are in the market for noblemen. Tandem and four-in-hand. Among the humorous features are a dress fitting, millinery, and back-button- ing contest. A exes Get a Search Warrant N his just-out-get-a-copy-and-see-the-in- sides-of-a-great-man reminiscences, the Right Wealthy John D. Rockefeller says that “every week in the year for many, many years, this concern (mean- ing, of course, the Standard Oil Co.) has brought into this country more than a million dollars gold, all from the prod. ucts produced by American labor. Passing over the tautology of “ products produced,"” the question is: What be- came of that gold? Now is the chance to lay a new pipe line from the public treasury for the benefit of a few true party workers by getting out a search warrant and calling upon a nice, large, respectable, well-paid Committee of In- vestigation to sit on it. There is many aman in the country just now who could use a small lump of that gold right handily if it could be located. It was said of Cxsar that he “ brought many captives home to Rome whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.”” Possibly that was the great event in his- tory which our modern industrial Cxsar was emulating. If so, he left out the important part about the general coffers. Aye, there's the rub. Those products produced by American labor went across seas and Rockefeller xot the money and the general coffers just now make a noise like a deficit. Ellis O. Jones. HE Custom House is a place where a man’s finest feelings are outraged for the sake of providing revenue enough to enable favored industries to turn presidential elections in their favor. Thus he is confronted by two horns of a dilemma. To obey the law is to counte- nance robbery. To disobey it is to prac: tice a deception which is foreign to his real nature. Bad for the Novelists HILE the cable despatches to our great dailies were announcing the determination of the Albanians to throw off the Turkish yoke and acclaim Abruzzi as their King, the society re- porters were occupied in arranging the details of his approaching marriage to Miss Elkins of U. S. A. We devoutly hope that the newspaper gentlemen have, for once, slipped up and told the truth, for the prospect really pleases. The Albanians throw aside a yoke: the happy lovers assume another. America is in the lead—as usual. There is, however, a saddening note for the novelists in this carnival of hap- piness. The marraige is bound to have 2 depressing effect upon the fiction market. We hate to think that the “Zenda"’ and the “ Graustark ’’ type of story is to become mere truth, while truth must sink to the level of mere best-selling fiction. We sce the future all too clearly: The young American queen addressing the populace in perfect Albanian from her balcony: the man she loved as a mere duke has fought a series of spirited duels and become a fashionable king: between them they have foiled the wicked prime-minister: bombs have been exploded in secret and unsanitary don- jons: the blonde imprisoned princess has regained her reason: the rope of pearls has been recovered from the Gypsies in their mountain fastness: the cipher mes- sage has been, thank God! intercepted: Mrs. Elkins has been installed as per- manent Queen-Mother: Park Row cir- culations are soaring, and the stars and stripes are proudly floating on the escarp- ments, battlements, ramparts, counter- scarps and parapets of Queen Kather- ine’s royal abode—All waltz! “When the Coreys go. to their hunting lodge in Mit gan, they take along an orches- tra of twelve picces."—News of the Day. STRIKING instance of that Restraint which is the character of Station con- scious of its Obligations. For Strauss can't be played, and played right, by an orchestra of less than eighty pieces. = ADE, Opie Reed, E. W. Townsend and John Kendrick Bangs are only a few of the professional humorists who have entered politics. We shall soon have to replace the stars on the National flag with chestnuts