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 LES COULISSES

SOUVENIRS OF A STRAKOSCH OPERA NIGHT

it cannot have been a poet who first inspired the popular mind with that widely spread and deeply erroneous belief that "behind the scenes" all is hollow mockery and emptiness and unsightliness;—that the comeliness of the pliant limbs which move to music before the starry row of shielded lights is due to a judicious distribution of sawdust; and that our visions of fair faces are created by the magic contained in pots of ointment and boxes of pearl powder of which the hiding-places are known only to those duly initiated into the awful mysteries of the Green Room.

No; the Curtain is assuredly the Veil which hides from unromantic eyes the mysteries of a veritable Fairy-World,—not a fairyland so clearly and sharply outlined as the artistic fantasies of Christmas picture-books, but a fairy-land of misty landscapes and dim shadows and bright shapes moving through the vagueness of mystery. There is really a world of stronger