the novelty of it by
alleging that the men of northern Africa were really natives of
Mississippi or Louisiana, and were dancing only plantation hoe-downs in
slow time and increased perpendicular action.

But without question the high histrionic art of the Chinese, Javanese,
Turkish and Algerian actors ought to be seen. Maybe it was strangeness
rather than excellence and novelty rather than entertainment that drew
the people but strangeness and novelty are the greater excellence when
people come to see wonders.

The Chinese theater is by far the most pretentious. It was pretty well
advertised to the world at the advent of the actors in Vancouver and
their encounter with the custom officers. They came to Chicago several
hundred strong and are housed in the big blue-and-gilt structure with
trim pagodas near the Cottage Grove end of the Midway. Entrance to the
theater is through a big tea house, where decent-looking Chinamen who do
not look like rats and whose fluent English proclaims their long sojourn
in "Flisco," serve the cheering cup at from 10 to 60 cents, according to
the pliability of the victim. They are doing a business worthy of a
better cause. The tea house is but the ante-chamber to a joss house
overhead, mendaciously advertised to be "the biggest outside of China,"
and to the theater proper. The latter is not so big as the Chinese
theaters in San Francisco, but it smells sweeter, being over ground and
not surrounded with the cooking-rooms and opium bunks of the actors.
This is a concession to occidental taste which all but oriental
enthusiasts will appreciate. Nor are visitors allowed, as in San
Francisco, to inspect the green-room or sit on the stage.

[Illustration: "She visited the play and sincerely regretted it."]

In other respects the theater is pure San Francisco Chinese. There is
the orchestra, led by the man with the yard-wide cymbals, playing the
leading part. There is the property man, always in evidence, who places
a chair and says "This is a horse," or turns the chair around and calls
it a mountain. And there is the female impersonator with deeply roughed
cheeks, who is the pride and flower of histrionic art. Women are not
allowed to walk the boards of the Chinese theater, but the male actor
who best can mimic woman's tones and mincing airs is the Henry Irving.
There is a whole chorus of these men-women in the Jackson Park
theater--an all-star combination. As for the piece itself, they first