d Rosie, their
children. Cho-Cho and Everychild

_Scene IV. The Coal-mine_

Joe, Jack, Bert--three old miners and two boys

_Final Scene. Same as first scene_

Cho-Cho, Everychild, Mother, Father. Old group of children and new
group with Everychild

PROLOGUE

BY CHO-CHO

Good people!
This is the Play of Everychild
With Cho-Cho
As Author and Manager.
The play has defects--
It has good points--
And bad points--
Like the world itself--
Like life!
Perhaps the author of the world
Is something like me,
A little grotesque,
A little whimsical,
Serious often,
Sometimes all the more serious
Seen through a Fool's words
With cap and jingle of bells.
In this droll world
There are lots of children
Who are the children of fools--
Like me.
Good people!
I bespeak your patience
With Everychild
Daughter of a Clown.

SCENE I: _Stage dark as curtain rises. Moderate starlight and quiet
music of cradle-song type. Little fairies come out dancing in the
darkness with firefly lamps and sing the following cradle song:_

Some one is sleeping
Out in the dark
Where fireflies glimmer
Spark upon spark.

Some little stranger
Come from afar
Under the glory
Of moon and of star.

Deep in the blossoms
That drift as they fall
Some one is sleeping
And stirs not at all.

Sleep, little stranger!
The night is near gone;
Sleep, little stranger,
But dream of the dawn!

_The dim light reveals a dark figure lying on the mosses at the foot
of an old tree. As the light grows gradually stronger the dark object
begins to move, to slowly take off one after another of black
coverings, revealing a little girl of nine or ten years, dressed in
white. She rubs her eyes, looks about wonderingly, and slowly rises
to a standing position. Meanwhile the earth grows more luminous and
roseate. The birds have begun to twitter now and then before the dawn,
and their notes increase in number and variety with the approach of
morning. The growing light reveals an orchard of old apple-trees near
at hand in full bloom, with petals falling, and hills and mountains
lifting and towering upward higher and higher into the blue distance.
A path leads from the orchard up the near hills and toward the
heights. The music has grown louder, and is sweet and tender,