door, and while none of them ever produced correct music,
still they were a great diversion.

There were strolling players, too. The first performance was
the most interesting that I have ever seen. The players arranged
themselves within a square roughly drawn in the middle of the road;
then to the strains of a bamboo fiddle, bamboo flute, bamboo drum,
the melodrama was begun. The hero pranced into the open square to the
tune of a minor dirge, not knowing a single sentence of his part; the
prompter, kneeling down before a flaring candle, told him what to say;
he repeated in parrot-like fashion, and then pranced off the square
to slow dirge-like music. Now the heroine minced in from the opposite
corner to slow music with her satin train sweeping in the dust; though
carefully raised when she crossed the sacred precincts of the square,
and in a sauntering way, with one arm akimbo and the other holding
the fan up in the air, she took the opposite corner and the prompter
told her what to say. In the meantime the candle blew out; it was
relighted; the prompter found his place and signaled to the hero to
come on. From the opposite side again, with a bow and hand on heart,
the lover repeated after the prompter his addresses to the waiting
maiden. She pretended to be surprised and shocked at his addresses,
fainted away and was carried off the stage by two women attendants;
the lover with folded arms looked calmly at the sad havoc he had
wrought. Now a rival suitor sprang into the ring and with a huge
bolo attacked number one and killed him. The heroine was now able to
return. She did not fall into the arms of number two. She only listened
placidly to the demand of how much she would pay to secure so splendid
a man as the one that could bolo his rival. The parents finally entered
and settled the difficulty. The play closed with the prospect of a
happy union. The company dispersed, the women and girls walking on
one side of the road with the torches in their hands, and the men on
the other, in two solemn files. There was no chattering or laughing;
yet they all felt that they had had a most delightful performance.

Two or three concerts given at a neighboring town were very
creditable, but only the better class attended; nine-tenths of the
people resort to these crude, wayside performances. They look on with
seeming indifference; there is never a sign of approval, much less
an outburst of applause. They seem to have no place in th