that when the
orchestra played 'Turkey in the Straw,' and Bill Master began to shake
the sand-box--which is a new wrinkle in musical circles in our
town--John Markley's feet began to wiggle until people thought this was
his 'chill day.' After 'Turkey in the Straw,' the orchestra struck up
something quick and devilish, which Charley Hedrick, who played the
snare drum at Gettysburg, and is therefore entitled to speak on musical
subjects, says was 'The Irish Washerwoman.' After this appropriate
overture the curtain rose and the real show began.

"Mr. Keene's Hamlet is not so familiar to our people as his Richard
III., but it gave great satisfaction; for it is certainly a Methodist
Hamlet from the clang of the gong to the home-stretch. The town never
has stood for Mr. Lawrence Barrett's Unitarian Hamlet, and the high
church Episcopal Hamlet put on the boards last winter by Mr. Frederick
Paulding was distinctly disappointing. One of the most searching scenes
in the play was enacted when Ophelia got the power and had to be carried
out to the pump. The Chicago brother who plays the ghost has a great
voice for his work. He brought many souls to a realizing sense that they
are sin-stricken and hair-hung over the fiery pit. The groans and amens
from the sanctified in the audience were a delicate compliment to his
histrionic ability. The queen seems to have been a Presbyterian, and the
king a Second Day Adventist of an argumentative type. And they were not
popular with the audience, but the boy preacher who did Laertes was
exceedingly blessed with the gift of tongues. Brother Polonius seems to
have been a sort of presiding elder, and, when his exhortation rose, the
chickens in Mike Wessner's coop, in the meat-market downstairs, gave up
hope of life and lay down to be cut up and fried for breakfast. The
performance was a great treat and, barring the fact that some switchmen,
thinking Ophelia was full, giggled during the mad scene, and the further
fact that someone yelled, 'Go for his wind, Ham!' during the fencing
scene, the evening with Shakespeare's weirdest hero was a distinct
credit to Mr. Keene, his company and our people."

We wrote a conventional report of the performance, and printed
Mehronay's account below it, under the caption FROM ANOTHER REPORTER,
and it made the paper talked about for a week. Now in our town Keene was
a histrionic god of the first order, and so many church people came to
the office to "stop the pape