Stage vs. Home Life

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 25.

Stage vs. Home Life.

I HAVE known men to play while their wives were dying at home. Last season the stage manager in one of the chief theaters of New York had a wife and daughter. The daughter married. She was fragile, and the pains of approaching maternity compelled her, although in the profession, to throw up her work and retire to her bed. The stage manager had contracted rheumatic cold, and was likewise forced to take his bed. The wife and mother was in the ballet of one theater, the husband of the daughter was an actor in another theater. Night came; leaving the two invalids in the care of a young servant, the mother hurried to the ballet, and the husband, a comedian, to his fun and frolic. The illness of the daughter took a serious turn, and ere the husband could be summoned from his motley, or the mother from her peasant's dress, she passed from pain into unconsciousness, and before the morning dawned her spirit had gone, leaving her father racked with pain upon his bed in the adjacent room, a motherless babe crying upon the pillow, the husband crazed with disappointment and grief, and the mother worn to a shadow by watching, anxiety, and a divided duty. The next night came. Was the mother excused from her dance? Oh, no! She was a central figure. The management were sorry, but if she cared to retain her place she must perform her duty, so she left her dead daughter in one room and her husband in the next, and did her devoir like a woman. The husband, a man of experience, twice the age of his child wife, was the life and soul and humorous helm of a side-splitting play. Was he excused? Not at all. He had no under-study. It was the second week of the performance, and it was really essential that he should attend to his part, so he left his dead wife in one room and his suffering father-in-law in the other, and his little babe in the care of a wet nurse, borrowed for the occasion from a sympathizing neighbor, and never played so well in his life as he did that night.—Sel.