Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into a
slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith shop
or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter house,
with all the paraphernalia for killing cattle, and supe butchers to stand
around the star butcher with cleavers and knives.
The star butcher could sit on a barrel of pigs' feet, or a pile of heads
and horns, and soliloquize over his unrequitted love, as he sharpened a
butcher knife on his boot. The hour for slaughtering having arrived,
cattle could be driven upon the stage, the star could knock down a steer
and cut its throat, and hang it up by the hind legs and skin it, with the
audience looking on breathlessly.
As he was about to cut open the body of the dead animal, the orchestra
could suddenly break the stillness, and the heroine could waltz out from
behind a lot of dried meat hanging up at one side, dressed in a lavender
satin princess dress, _en train_, with a white reception hat with ostrich
feathers, and, wading through the blood of the steer on the
carpet, shout, "Stay your hand, Reginald!"
The star butcher could stop, wipe his knife on his apron, motion to the
supe butchers to leave, and he would take three strides through the blood
and hair, to the side of the heroine, take her by the wrist with his
bloody hand, and shout, "What wiltest thou, Mary Anderson de Montmorence?"
Then they could sit down on a box of intestines and liver and things and
talk it over, and the curtain could go down with the heroine swooning in
the arms of the butcher.
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