It
was heralded as coming from Booth's theater, N.Y., where it had a run of
four months. Most of them got away while on the trip here, and only a few
appeared. The scenery, which was also extensively advertised, was no more
than could have been fixed up with a whitewash brush in half a day, by
home talent. The play, what there was of it was well rendered, though many
doubted the propriety of the king calling around him a lot of La Crosse
soldiers, to hear him tell the Greek slave how he loved her. There was
much dissatisfaction about the Greek slave. All marble statues of the
Greek slave represent her with nothing on but a trace chain around one arm
and one leg. But the party who got up this play went behind the returns
and invested her with a white night gown, which detracted very much from
history. The "soldiers" were picked up among the La Crosse boys, and they
got tangled up, and couldn't form a line to save themselves, and when they
stood against the wall it was a melancholy fact that they tickled the
ballet girls in the ribs as they passed by. This was highly wrong. It
takes the romance out of the affair to gaze upon an Assyrian soldier,
covered with armor, and carrying a cover to a wash boiler in his hand, and
to think that he is covered with scars won in battle, and then look at him
through a glass and have him wink at you, and you find that you have seen
him thousands of times standing on the postoffice corner, spitting tobacco
juice across the sidewalk at the hydrant.
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