“It was the most laughable we ever witnessed.  In the first scene one of those marble statues, so peculiar to John T.’s mismanagement, that resemble granite in a bad state of small-pox, fell over.

“The house was amazed to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell.

“The scene that exhibited the balcony affair was a sweet thing.  Evidently the noble house of the Capulets was in reduced circumstances.  The building from which Juliet issued was a frame structure so frail in material that we feared a collapse.

“If the carpenter who erected that structure for the Capulets charged more than ten dollars currency he swindled the noble old duffer infamously.  The front elevation came under that order of architecture known out West as Conestoga.  It was all of fifteen feet in height, and depended for ornamentation on a brilliant horse cover thrown over the corner of the balcony, and a slop bucket that Juliet was evidently about to empty on the head of Romeo when that youth made his presence known.  The house shook so under Juliet’s substantial tread, that an old lady near us wished to be taken out, declaring that ’that young female would get her neck broken next thing.’

“In the last scene where the page (Miss Lulu Dickson) was ordered to extinguish the torch, the poor girl made frantic efforts, but failing, walked off with the thing blazing.

“When Paris entered with his page, a youth in a night shirt, that youth carried in his countenance the fixed determination of putting out his torch at the right moment or dieing in the attempt.  We all saw that.

“Expectancy was worked up to a point of intense interest, so that when at last the word was given, a puff of wind not only extinguished the torch but shook the scenery, and made us thankful the young man did wear pantaloons, as the consequences might have been terrible.

“When Count Paris fell mortally wounded, a tombstone at his side fell over him in the most convenient and charming manner.  The house was so convulsed with merriment that when poor Juliet was exposed in the tomb she was greeted with laughter, much to the poor girl’s embarrassment.  And this is the sort of entertainment to which we have been treated throughout our entire season.  But then the showman is a success and pays his bills.”

The great Eastern cities of America are regarded by an American artist much in the same light as is the metropolis by a provincial artist at home.  Their approval is supposed to stamp as genuine the verdict of remoter districts.  The success which had attended Mary Anderson in her journeyings West and South was not to desert her when she presented herself before the presumably more critical audiences of the East.  She made her Eastern debut at Pittsburg, the Birmingham of America, in the heat of the Presidential