Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/81

Rh be endurable. As I entered with some ladies an usher in full dress and white kid gloves presented each of us with beautiful bouquets, and offering his arm to the ladies, escorted the party to the box with the air and manner of a prince. Once in the box, he gave us little programmes, went out, and locked the door. Interested, I watched the people as they came in and arranged themselves comfortably. Much amused and even disconcerted we were when we found hundreds of glasses turned our way and held there long and steadily, as they saw we were "greengoes," or foreigners, and with feminine timidity we thanked our lucky stars we had ventured forth without a bonnet—as no woman ever wears a hat to the theater here—so that the difference would not have been more pronounced.

At last the curtain went up, and before the actress, who was sitting on a chair, crying, could issue one blubber, dozens of bouquets were flung at her feet. Not understanding the words the play seemed most absurd. Apparently the girl could not marry her lover because her mother had forbidden it, as another sister loved the same man, and as he did not reciprocate she was dying; the dying sister appeared but once, then in a nightdress, and soon afterward screamed heartily behind the scenes and was pronounced dead by the actors. The men and women cried continuously all the evening, and Americans dubbed the play "The Pocket-Handkerchief." Once, when the lover told his sweetheart he was going out to fight a duel with a dude with a big eyeglass, who had loved the dead girl, she fainted on his breast and he held her there, staggering beneath her weight, while he delivered a fifteen-minute eulogy. As she was about two feet taller and twice as heavy as he, the scene was most comical, particularly when she tried to double up to reach his shoulder, and forgot she had fainted and moved her hands repeatedly. But smothering our American mirth we looked on in sympathy. How it ended I cannot tell, for at 2 o'clock I started for home and the players were then weeping with as much vigor as when the curtain first rose.

The carvings and finishing of the National Theater are superb. It is surpassed by few in the States, but the walls are smeared and dirty—no curtains deck the boxes,