Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/369

 IN THE PLAY.

ie Necessities in the Production of

cts.

piston produced an apparent ex- This was fed by a hose connec- -om the boiler-room of the thea- )n the first night, as the derailed toppled over, the valve got d&quot; the whole business. Nobody urt, and the audience, which sup- it was intended, was in ecstacies. heater was crowded the second n expectation of the realistic busi- but was doomed to disappoint-
 * d, and the pressure of the steam

ve seen, a good many oher full- engines put upon the stage, f them in this city, but for 3f finish in the polished metal wood and paper &quot;fakes.&quot; A lade property should be illusory, lect seeing a &quot;fake&quot; locomotive at ople s. Theater in New York which &amp;gt;ally a painted set piece with prac- 5 wheels and some cylinders and 5 working on the face of it. This* [so a first-night occasion and with of noise and a quick curtain have gone well enough, but it vorked by three men walking at ick of it. The topheavy stuff got
 * they have all been mani-
 * tter of their grasp, which fell on
 * e, revealing the three astonished

to the equally astonished house.

in this city by Frank Marcus, an ac complished modeler.

Probably among large properties the most imDortant ever made was that of the, Egyptian god Ptha in &quot;Aida&quot; at the Metropolitan Opera-house in New York. The statue, made in paper upon a wooden framework, was modeled from an authentic example. It represented an Egyptian Pharaonic divinty, with the peculiar napkin.like headdress known as the &quot;klaft,&quot; and was seated in the characteristic attitude of solemn dignity, with the hands upon the knees, as in the statue of Memnon. With its pedestal it reached a height of thir ty-five feet, and, being placed in the center of a scene designed after the famous Hall of Columns at Karnak, it was a remarkable feature of the spectacle. The four corners! of the tem ple were occupied by four other remark able properties gigantic incense tri pods, fanned by the priestesses while singing the famous soprano prayer to the &quot;Almighty Ptha, God of Nature.&quot;

When the theater was burned, not only did that enormous property go up, but also one of the most complete and beautiful collections of stage armor, jewelry and weapons was destroyed. Most of the armor had been made for the Wagnerian operas. Some of the pieces, such as the winged helmet of Wotan, were works of art, but the collection also contained some fine pieces of genuine armor, one suit of Florentine in partic ular being inlaid with florid Niello work.

The properties, however, made in a theater run by American millionaires, regardless of expense, can hardly be taken as types of ordinary work; yet some of them were very interesting. The gigantic swan in &quot;Lohengrin,&quot; which had to be raised on 1 a special trap, and the enormous dragon, opening jaws large enough to swallow a horse, breathing out steam and flames, in