There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in the stage is more than double discounted by the interest they manifest in and towards the audience. The "masher" makes it a market in which to display his fascinations and call upon the susceptible fraction of femininity to inspect and avail themselves of his heart-breaking and soul-wasting wares. Whether he modestly takes his stand in the rear of the auditorium, overcoat on arm and stove-pipe hat gracefully poised upon the thumb of his left hand, while, with polished opera-glass, he sweeps the sea of variegated millinery and obtrusive-hued cosmetics, or bravely hangs up his charms to view on the front row of the dress circle, or prominently displays them in a proscenium box, he is ever the same offensive and shameless barber-and-tailor-shop decoration, moved by a wild ambition to attract and hold feminine attention, and always attaining to a degree of notoriety among the masculine theatre-goers that keeps him overwhelmed with contempt, and causes him to be as readily recognized as if he had a tag tied to his back or spread across his vest front, declaring him to be a fisher after femininity. When the "masher" takes the shape of the young blood, whose short and tightly-fighting coat is matched by the shallowness of the crown of his straight-brimmed hat, and whose eye-glasses straddle his nose as gracefully as his twenty-five-cent cane is carried in his hand, and this irresistible combination of attractions is thrust upon the audience from a box opening, the acme of the lady-killing art is reached and if all the world does not admire the effective tableau it must be because all the world is unappreciative and the "masher" stands on an Æsthetic plane to which the rest of mankind cannot hope to aspire.

But the "masher" is only a fraction of the class of amusement patrons to which attention has been called in the opening sentence of this chapter. Apart from the people who deem it their duty to come tramping into the theatre while the performance is going on, and whose coming is followed by a triumphal flourish of banging seats, and the heaving footbeats of hurrying ushers, to the intense disgust of all who care to hear the first act of the play, there are others who have a hundred ways of annoying an audience, and who make a very effectual use of their gifts in this direction. There is the member of the "profesh,"—the gaseous advance agent, or the bloviate business manager, the actor "up a stump," or the "super" who has played the part of a silent but spectacular lictor with John McCullough or Tom Keene, and who sits in the rear of the house, but sufficiently forward to be distinctly heard by people in the dress circle, criticising the mannerisms of the ladies or gentlemen on the stage and "guying" everybody in the cast from the star down to the frightened and stiff-kneed little ballet girl whom an inscrutable Providence has allowed to wander in upon the scene occasionally, to say, "Yes, mum," or "No, mum." The leisurely but loud professional who thus disports himself must necessarily enjoy a large share of the audience's attention, and the more of this he attracts the more he is encouraged to be extravagant in his criticisms and unreserved in his elocution. He sometimes must dispute the title to obstreperous obtrusiveness with some liquor-laden auditor who has succeeded in passing the door-keeper only to find that the heat of the house has accelerated his inebriation and given freedom and license to his tongue until the "bouncer" lifts him out of his seat by the collar and deposits him in a reflective and emetic mood on the curbstone in front of the theatre. Then, too, a crowd of friends sometimes get together in the parquette, who begin a conversation before the first curtain rises and keep it going on in careless and annoying tones until the final flourish of the orchestra arrives with the dimming of the lights as the audience files out. But if the loud members of the "profesh," the interjective inebriate, and the crowd of communicative friends are not on hand to furnish diversion for the folks who are trying to follow what is going forward on the stage, there is one other never-failing source of distraction and annoyance—the giddy and gushing usher. It is safe to bet that just when the most pathetic passage of a play is reached, or the tragedian is singing smallest, a few ushers will throw themselves hastily together in the lobby and hold a mass meeting long and loud enough to be taken for a November night political meeting, if there were only a stake wagon and a few Chinese lanterns strewn around. Indeed, the usher seems to assume that he is a sort of safety-valve through which a disturbance must break out now and then to offset the quiet of the audience. If the usher isn't plying his fiendish proclivity, some bald-headed man in the parquette is sure to throw his skating rink over the back of the seat, and, with shining brow turned up towards the sun-burner in the dome, mouth rounded out like the base of a cupola and nostrils working like a suction pump, his beautiful snore will rise above the wildest roar of the orchestra and drown the mellifluous racket of the big bass drum, until some friendly hand disturbs the dreamer, and the "or-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!" that rushes up his nostrils, down his throat and out through his ears, is thus gently and perhaps only temporarily interrupted. The enthusiast—the man who is carried away by the spirit of the scene—is also a source of annoyance, and when he signifies from the balcony his willingness to take a hand in what is being enacted on the stage, damning the villain heartily, and, like the sailor of old, openly sympathizing with femininity in distress, he first becomes a target for the gallery boys' gutter-wit and finally a prey to the inexorable "bouncer," who roams around the upper tiers of every theatre and unceremoniously dumps disturbers down stairs. Last, but by no means least, in the distracting and disturbing features at theatrical performances is the peanut cruncher. He is the most cold-blooded and least excusable of all the annoyances with which amusement patrons are afflicted. He wraps his teeth around the roasted goober, utterly reckless of the distress he is stirring up in the bosoms of those around him, and he grinds and smacks and continues to crunch, stopping occasionally to charge his dental quartz-crusher anew, and always beginning on the latest goober with the greatest ferocity, while he seems to make it go ten times further, as far as time and agony are concerned, than any of its predecessors. All the other disturbance consequent upon attending a play are petty, compared with peanut-crunching, and it is the opinion of the writer that a law should be passed at once, making it a felony for any banana-stand or hand-cart man to sell peanuts to citizens who are on their way to the theatre. If such a law were passed, and if it were not a dead letter, the people whose backbones feel as if they were being fondled by a circular saw every time they hear the rustling of a goober-shell, would flop right down on their knees and renew their confidence in the wisdom of Providence.

The young men and the old men, too, who go out "between acts" to hold spirit seances with neighboring bar-keepers, while the orchestra is playing a Strauss waltz or a medley of comic opera numbers for the solace of the lovely ladies they have left behind them, are a greater nuisance to the audience of a first-class theatre than one would imagine. In nine cases out of ten, the man who goes out to see another man, as the saying is, has his seat in the middle of a row, so that it is necessary for him to make trouble for ten or a dozen persons before he can reach the aisle. He tramples on ladies' dresses, comes into collision with their knees, and sends a thrill of pain to the utmost ends of the roots of every man's corn he treads on. The same thing is repeated on the way back to his seat, and there are bitter mutterings, a great deal of subdued or smothered profanity, and fierce, rebuking looks flash from beneath the beautiful bonnets of the females. It doesn't seem to affect the nuisance any, however, for he does the same thing over every act, and at each repetition increases to the damage he does and the commotion he creates. Then, to make bad worse, he manages to surround himself with a distillery odor that assails feminine nostrils in a most offensive manner, and that will not suffer itself to be concealed or tempered by the chewing of coffee-grounds, cloves, or orange-peel. I witnessed the discomfiture of a young man of this kind, one night, and the scene was a very funny one. He occupied a seat in the orchestra, in the centre of a row of seats principally filled with ladies. As the curtain went down the young man determined to go over and have a look through the saloon opposite. Unwilling to incommode the ladies in the least, the young man, with Chesterfieldian grace, elevated a pedal extremity over the back of his chair, with the intention of going out through the aisle behind. Unfortunately he stepped between the seat and the back, the movable seat flew up, and the thirsty young man was left astride of the chair in a decidedly uncomfortable position. By this time the gallery gods had marked him for their victim. They hooted, whistled, cat-called, and made slang remarks about straddling the "ragged edge," to his evident discomfiture. In vain he attempted to disengage his No. 10's. The rest of the audience became interested, and opera-glasses were directed toward the blushing young man. The feminine giggles in his neighborhood rendered him frantic; laughter and uproar were becoming general, when a good-natured individual kindly assisted him to escape from his awkward position. Amid "thunders of applause" he disappeared.

The ladies, too, sometimes contribute largely to the annoyance of an audience. They are, as everybody knows, inveterate talkers, and insist on saying almost as much during a performance as the players say. Their criticism of the toilets of friends and of strangers also, is loud-sweeping and usually denunciatory, and they have a style of pillorying their victims in speech that is decidedly heartless, yet refreshing. But all the faults of loud and untamed talk might have been forgiven had they not introduced the tremendous big hats which rise high above their heads and stick far out from their ears completely shutting off a view of the stage from the persons immediately in the rear. Strong men have shed tears to find themselves conquered by these big hats; they have tried to peep around them, and have stood tip-toed on their chairs to have a glance over the tops of the millinery structures, but in vain. The hats were too much for them. In a mild, Æsthetic way the ladies' big hats rank among the greatest plagues that have ever visited the modern play-house.

I was in the Grand Opera House at St. Louis, one evening, sitting in seat No. 3, row B, centre section, parquette circle. Before the play began two ladies, one dressed in black silk with a white satin jacket and black beaver hat, with long sweeping feather, and the other plainly dressed in black cashmere, with a "Sensation" hat and tassel on, came in and took seats 1 and 2 in row A, same section. Prior to settling down in their places, they looked inquiringly around the rear of the theatre, one remarking to the other as they plumped down in the chairs, "I suppose they haven't got here yet." Seats three and four adjoining them were vacant. The ladies had come unattended. After they had arranged themselves the lady with the beaver hat drew out a letter and held it up to the light so that the reporter could read it. It had a cut of one of the principal hotels at the top and was note-paper from that establishment. It said:—

To Mamie and Sadie: Your note of to-day received. We like your style and enclose two seats for Grand Opera House to-night, where we hope to meet you both and make your acquaintance.

Yours sincerely,
George and Harry.

Just as the orchestra began the overture in walked two gentlemen whom the usher showed to the vacant seats in row A. One of the men was tall, bald, portly and rather good-looking and well dressed; he had a sandy moustache, and what hair was left on his head was reddish, crisp, and curly. He was probably forty-five years old. His companion was probably not more than twenty-one, tall, thin, dark-complexioned, with but a semblance of a moustache. The ladies smiled as the gentlemen took their places. The men looked at each other, winked, and laughed. When the two were seated, the bald-headed man made a close and evidently satisfactory scrutiny of the ladies, and catching the eye of the one in the beaver hat, the two exchanged smiles—not broad, committal grins, but soft smiles of mutual recognition. The second lady only dared to look sideways now and then. The second gentleman, who sat next to the ladies, was rather shy and kept his hand up to his face from beginning to end of the play. It was evident this was the first time the quartette had met, and it was evident also that they had made up their minds to act with all due decorum while in the theatre. Smiles were now and then exchanged, but no words were spoken. Once one of the ladies sent her programme to the bald man, who had none. During the third act of the play the baldhead began writing short notes which the lady in the beaver hat answered affirmatively with a nod of her head. When the show was over the two ladies went around one street, the two men around another, and they met in the middle of the block opposite the theatre. There was a brief conversation in which a great deal of tittering was heard, and then the quartette proceeded to a quiet restaurant of the most questionable reputation and took one of the private supper-rooms, which are at the disposal of people whose visit to the establishment is not by any means for the sole purpose of drinking and eating, but has a broad and very unmistakable suggestion of immorality in it.

The key to the whole affair can be found in the following advertisement, published in the Globe-Democrat of the preceding Sunday:— Personal.—Two gentlemen of middle age and means desire to become acquainted with two vivacious, fun-loving young ladies who like to go to the theatre. Address George and Harry, this office.

George and Harry had received an answer to this advertisement from "Mamie and Sadie," and, just to meet and become acquainted with them, had purchased the four seats in row A, centre section, Grand Opera House, making the theatre their place of assignation. "Mamie and Sadie" were by no means the innocent and unsophisticated creatures they seemed to be. One of them was the wife of a travelling man who was necessarily away from home ten months in a year; the other was nymph du pave—a street-walker—who scoured the principal thoroughfares at night for victims to carry to her "furnished room," and who had been educated up to the "personal" racket by the lonely and wayward young wife of the commercial drummer.

So much for the noisy, otherwise obtrusive phases of the subject. The ladies who go to the theatre to display themselves, to flash their jewels and flaunt their silks and laces in the faces of the community, have become so accustomed to the general run of theatrical attractions that they are really no longer spectators, and may be justly classed among the distracting agencies in the audience. Their mission is a "mashing" one to a certain extent, but it is "mashing" of a vain and by no means harmful character. Other ladies are seen in the dress circle and the boxes who do not disguise the fact that they have come to the theatre to fascinate the too, too yielding men. At the matinees there are women of questionable repute who unblushingly advertise their calling and who must be set down as a feature most objectionable to the respectable portion of any community. They behave themselves as far as words or actions go, but their mere presence in the play-house is an annoyance that refined and elegant people cannot tolerate. That is all about them. Now for the very worst practices that are occasionally noted in theatres, and that the managers know very little if anything about,—the women who are there for nefarious purposes, and the men who have other ideas than gratifying their vanity or merely making heart-conquests. It is a notorious and flagrant fact that fast women use the theatre as places of assignation, wherein they meet old and make new acquaintances, and it is equally notorious that men whose whole energy seems bent to the distruction of innocent girlhood make it a rendezvous for the purpose of selecting and snaring their victims.

It is perfectly safe to assume that the cunning and sinful pair fleeced George and Harry before they got through with them.

The very same evening my attention was called by a young lady to a thinly-bearded, spectacled, sickly-looking middle-aged man who sat in the next seat to the lady, and who, she complained, had stepped on her foot several times and in other ways tried to attract her attention and get her into a conversation. I at once recognized the fellow as one of an unscrupulous set who pored over big ledgers in the Court-House, and gave the greater portion of their time to discussions concerning female friends of ill-repute, and to boasting of the ruin they had brought or were about to bring to some innocent young girl.

The same man was in the habit of buying single seats in the dress circle and visited the theatre frequently. He represents a class of venerable, but iniquitous fellows who make a practice of mixing in among the ladies, in the hope of scraping an occasional acquaintance, and who have no good intention in desiring to extend the circle of their female friends. They should be kept out of every respectable place of amusement.