New Faces | Page 6

there?" and
the other: "'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.""
"Yes, and she ruins them. I've drilled her and drilled her till my throat
is sore and still she says it straight through her nose just as though she
were delivering an order of 'ham and' at her hash battery. Just the same
truculent 'Don't you dare to answer back' attitude. She's impossible. She
must be removed."
Meanwhile the Lady Hyacinths scattering to their different homes

discussed their mentor. Ophelia and Horatio and Hamlet were going
through Clinton Street together. Ophelia was still at Elsinore but
Horatio was approaching common ground again.
"I suppose he's Miss Masters' steady," said he to Hamlet. "He wouldn't
come down here every other night just to help us goils out."
But Ophelia was better informed. She knew Miss Masters to be
engaged to quite another person.
"Then I know," cried Horatio triumphantly. "He's stuck on Rosie
Rosenbaum. It's her brings him."
Ophelia said nothing, and Horatio having experienced an inspiration,
set about strengthening it with proof.
"It's Rosie sure enough. Ain't he learned her about every part in the
play? Don't he keep takin' her off in corners an' goin' 'Who's there, 'Tis
now struck twelve' for about an hour every night? I wouldn't have
nothin' to do with a feller that kept company that way, but I s'pose it's
the style on Fifth Avenue. You know how I tell you, Ham, in the play
that there's lots of things goin' on what you ain't on to. Well it's so.
None of you was on to Rosie an' his nibs. You didn't ever guess it did
you 'Pheleir?"
"No," admitted Ophelia. "No, I never did."
"Well it's so. You watch 'em. The style in wives is changin'. Actresses
is goin' out an' the 'poor but honest workin' goil' is comin' in. One of
our salesladies has a book about it. "The Bowery Bride" its name is. All
about a shop goil what married a rich fellow and used to come back to
the store and take her old friends carriage ridin'. If Rosie Rosenbaum
tries it on me, I'll break her face. If she comes round me," cried the
Prince's fellow student: "with carriages and a benevolent smile, I'll claw
the smile off of her if I have to take the skin with it!"
When Horatio and Hamlet left her, she wandered disconsolate, down to
the river. But no willow grows aslant that brook, no flowers were there

with which to weave fantastic garlands.
"I've gone crazy all right," said poor Ophelia as she watched the lights
of the great bridge, "but I don't drown myself until Scene VII. And I'm
goin' up to his house to-morrow night to learn to act crazy. I guess I
don't need much learning."
* * * * *
The performance of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths is still remembered
by those who saw it as the most bewildering entertainment of their
theatrical experience. The play had been cut down to its absolute
essentials and the players, though drilled and coached in their lines and
business, had been left quite free in the matters of interpretation and
accent. The result was so unique that the daily press fell upon it with
whoops of joy and published portraits of and interviews with the
leading characters. People who had thought that only ferries and docks
lay south of Twenty-third Street penetrated to the heart of the great East
Side and went home again full of an altruism which lasted three days.
And on the last night of the "run" of three nights, Jack Burgess brought
Albert Marsden to witness it. Other spectators had always emerged
dumb or inarticulate from the ordeal but the great actor was not one of
them. He was blusterous and garrulous and, to Burgess' amazement, not
at all amused.
"Who is that girl who played Ophelia? Is she an East Side working girl
or one of the mission people?"
"She's a shop-girl," answered Burgess. "There's no good in your asking
me to introduce you to her for I won't. That's been one of our rules from
the beginning. We don't want the children to be upset and patronized."
"Who taught her to act?"
"Well, I coached them all as you know, but she never seemed to require
any special teaching. Pretty good, isn't she?"
"Pretty good! She is a genius--a wonder. This is all rot about my not

meeting her. I am going to meet her and train her. I suppose you have
noticed that she is a beauty too."
"But she's only a child," Burgess urged. "She's only eighteen. She
couldn't stand the life and the work and she couldn't stand the people.
You have no idea what high ideals these girls have, and Mary