Part 21

Its Brightness Enables Farmers to Gather in Their Crops During the Night—The Natural Phenomena Which Make September “The Month of Moonlight.”

September is “the month of moonlight.” Poets and impressionists at this season of the year, have, from time immemorial, flooded the world with harvest-moon imagery. Pictures of moonlight lovers strolling along moonlit lanes, rowing on moonlit rivers, in moonlit boats, moonlight gleaners and the harvest home have been painted over and over again in word and color, but the why and wherefor of the extraordinary brilliance of the Queen of Night during the period that she is known as the “harvest moon” has been completely lost sight of by the great majority.

Those who observe the ordinary astronomical phenomena of daily occurrence are familiar with the time variations in the moon’s rising and setting. This is due to the direction of the moon’s apparent path with reference to the horizon, of whatever place it is viewed from. Its distance from the earth and its daily motion eastward in right ascension.

For the first few days in every lunar month the moon rises or sets twenty-three or twenty-four minutes later for three or four successive evenings, after which the retardation varies from that time to an hour and seventeen minutes, and sometimes more.

In the latitude of New York the maximum retardation is seventy-seven minutes and the minimum is twenty-three.

When the retardation is a minimum at the time of the full moon, the light is very powerful, and farmers have often taken advantage of the practically all-night brilliancy for several days, to harvest their grain. September 21 being the autumnal equinox and the full moon occurring nearest that date being usually in the height of harvest time, it is called the harvest-moon.

To understand the action of the causes which produce this phenomenon it is necessary to remember that at the time of the autumnal equinox the sun sets exactly in the west, and the southern half of the ecliptic, or the sun’s apparent annual path in the sky, will then be wholly above the horizon and the northern half entirely below; the ecliptic, therefore, making the least possible angle with the horizon.

In high northern latitudes, as in Alaska, British Columbia, Norway and Sweden and the north of Scotland, the moon’s path at such times is almost parallel with the horizon, and for more than a week she rises at very nearly the same time, giving the farmers ample light and time to garner their crops.

THE SOWER.

A POEM IN WHICH A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN POET AND DIPLOMAT EXPRESSED HIS FEAR OF OLD WORLD INFLUENCES.

With the single exception of John Hay, no English-speaking poet has been so distinguished as a student of the social and political phases of national life as was James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). It is doubtful whether the United States ever produced a poet who was more truly national. His earlier verses were characterized by quaint Yankee humor, and many were virile pictures of New England life. In his later years, as a writer, editor, and lecturer, Lowell labored zealously to bring the literature and culture of the New World to a plane as high as that of the Old World. As a diplomat, he did more to cement the friendship of Great Britain and the United States than any man had done before. His official title, while in England, was that of United States Minister to Great Britain, but a London newspaper bestowed upon him another—“His Excellency the Ambassador of American Literature to the Court of Shakespeare.”

But though Lowell was cosmopolitan in many of his tastes, he was essentially a patriotic American. The great influx of foreigners and foreign ideals into the United States oftentimes excited his apprehension, and it was while under the influence of these fears that he wrote “The Sower,” which is printed herewith.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

I saw a Sower walking slow Across the earth, from east to west; His hair was white as mountain snow. His head drooped forward on his breast.

With shriveled hands he flung his seed, Nor ever turned to look behind; Of sight or sound he took no heed; It seemed he was both deaf and blind.

His dim face showed no soul beneath, Yet in my heart I felt a stir, As if I looked upon the sheath That once had clasped Excalibur.

I heard, as still the seed he cast, How, crooning to himself, he sung: “I sow again the holy Past, The happy days when I was young.

“Then all was wheat without a tare, Then all was righteous, fair, and true; And I am he whose thoughtful care Shall plant the Old World in the New.

“The fruitful germs I scatter free, With busy hand, while all men sleep; In Europe now, from sea to sea, The nations bless me as they reap.”

Then I looked back along his path, And heard the clash of steel on steel, Where man faced man, in deadly wrath, While clanged the tocsin’s hurrying peal.

The sky with burning towns flared red, Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, And brothers’ blood, by brothers shed, Crept, curdling, over pavements cold.

Then marked I how each germ of truth Which through the dotard’s fingers ran Was mated with a dragon’s tooth Whence there sprang up an armed man.

I shouted, but he could not hear; Made signs, but these he could not see; And still, without a doubt or fear, Broadcast he scattered anarchy.

Long to my straining ears the blast Brought faintly back the words he sung: “I sow again the holy Past, The happy days when I was young.”

ELEVENTH HOUR PERFORMANCES.

Some Wonderful Achievements Wrought Against Time by Celebrated Men of Genius Who Saved Critical Situations at the Last Minute—Phenomenal Records by Artists and Composers.

The world of genius abounds with stories of marvelous achievements at the last moment, especially the musical and artistic branch of it. Strange though it may seem, some of the finest music and paintings have been executed in a rush against time.

“There goes Leader, off to paint his dally picture,” was the usual comment of his neighbors, upon seeing the artist leave his rooms early in the morning with a canvas on his back. Although this may, perhaps, have been a too flattering anticipation, it is a well-known fact that on several occasions the academician produced a large picture within a few hours.

Marvelous as is Benjamin Williams Leader’s rapidity with his brush, he has a formidable rival in Solomon J. Solomon, A.R.A., who painted an admirable life-size portrait of Israel Zangwill for the Academy Exhibition within five hours of taking up his brush.

But neither Leader nor Solomon would dispute the honors of swift workmanship with Sir Edwin Landseer. He had promised a picture for the Spring Exhibition of the British Institution in 1845, but on the day before the exhibition was to be opened all the hanging committee had received was an empty frame, which was duly hung in the position of honor.

As the prospect of the frame receiving a picture for the opening seemed very slight, a member of the committee went to interview the artist. He found Landseer standing in front of a bare canvas.

“That’s the picture I promised,” said Sir Edwin, pointing to the canvas. “I haven’t touched it yet, but I will send it to the institution to-night.”

A few hours later the completed picture was delivered, and may be seen to-day in the National Gallery. This wonderful work of half a dozen hours was none other than the universally admired “Cavalier’s Pets.”

Sir Arthur Sullivan composed the brilliant epilogue of the “Golden Legend” in less than twenty-four hours. He sat down at nine o’clock one evening to compose the overture to “Iolanthe,” and did not rise from his desk until the last note was written at seven o’clock on the following morning, while the overture to the “Yeoman of the Guard” occupied him no more than twelve hours, both to compose and score.

It is told of Gaetano Donizetti that he wrote the instrumentation of an entire opera within thirty hours. On the very morning on which Gioacchino Antonio Rossini’s “Gazza Ladra” was to be produced not a single note of the overture had been written, and the manager was in despair. He sought out the lazy composer, locked him in one of the rooms of La Scala, and declared he should have neither food nor freedom until the overture was completed. Rossini set to work with a will and to such purpose that the music was written and rehearsed before the evening performance.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was equally as indolent and procrastinating as Rossini. At twelve o’clock on the night before the production of “Don Giovanni” the composer was making merry with a party of convivial friends and had forgotten that the overture was unwritten. As he was going to bed, in the early hours of the morning, his wife reminded him of the fact that it was the day of production and that the overture was not touched. He asked her to make him a bowl of punch and help keep him awake, and sat down to his work as the light of dawn began to stream through the window. He fell asleep, completely exhausted, and slept soundly for a short time. At five o’clock he resumed his work, and two hours later the overture was finished.

It is said that Herr Stehmann learned the entire part of the _Wanderer_ in “Siegfried” in six hours; and on one occasion when Herr Kraus, who was to have taken the leading rôle in Xaver Scharwenka’s “Mataswinka,” was suddenly taken ill, Stehmann, who had never before seen the part, mastered it so completely between the afternoon rehearsal and the evening performance, that in both words and music he was absolutely perfect.

Sidelights from Stageland.[6]

BY SECOND NIGHTER.

Little Tales of Idiosyncrasies, Adventures, and Misadventures That Playgoers Are Not Supposed to See or Hear.

_Collected and written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Footnote 6:

Began March SCRAP BOOK. Single copies, 10 cents.

LASSOOED THE COMPLIMENT.

Slow Speech of a Stranger Caused Miss Morewin to Sacrifice Conventionality on the Altar of Curiosity.

There must be times when actors are put in the embarrassing position of hearing their work discussed in public places by people who have seen the performance and are not aware that any of those who have taken part in it are within ear-shot. And sometimes, when there is a wag in the party, there are real dramatic moments in such episodes. Here is a case in point that happened in New York not so very long ago.

A party of men were descending in the elevator on their way to lunch in one of New York’s tallest skyscrapers. The car stopped at a floor and a lady got on. The wag in the group of men instantly recognized her as Louise Morewin, who plays the mother-in-law in “The Heir to the Hoorah,” which he had seen a few nights before.

The car was pretty well crowded and the wag was so placed that in the mirror he could see Miss Morewin’s face without being seen himself. And the spirit of mischief entered his soul.

“Say, fellows,” he began, “you have all seen ‘The Heir to the Hoorah.’ What do you think of the mother-in-law?”

One and another expressed an opinion, more or less non-committal so far as the playing of the part was concerned. But this did not satisfy the wag. It must be remembered that the building is very tall and that it requires some minutes for the elevator to reach the ground floor, so after the other comments had been gathered in, there was still time for a snapper.

“Well,” he remarked, “I saw the play the other night, and I think the actress who plays that mother-in-law is——”

He inserted a pause for impressiveness, and Miss Morewin could stand no more. Stepping around so that she faced him she broke out with:

“Well, what _do_ you think of her?”

“I think she is immense,” finished the wag, utterly unruffled, while his friends, who had failed to recognize their fellow passenger, stood with jaws dropped at the spectacle of the strange woman butting into their conversation.

As for Miss Morewin, she smiled, flushed a little, and when the car reached the street level, she hastily mingled with the throng and was lost to sight.

THE MODEST CHORUS MAN.

Owners of Bass and Tenor Voices are Regarded As Necessary Evils by the Producers of Musical Comedies.

We hear much of the chorus girl, but very little of the chorus man, who is no doubt considered by the manager a necessary evil, inasmuch as girls are not endowed, outside of dime museums at least, with bass and tenor voices. I know one of the four chorus men who made an oasis of deep tones in the blossoming garden of Weber & Fields’s girls, but he soon was promoted from the ranks to a principal part and is now reaping profits as a writer of comic songs.

He went into the business because he wanted to go on the stage, and found this the easiest door to it. Why do other chorus men take up the thing, I asked myself, and to find out, I proceeded to get acquainted with two young fellows in the George M. Cohan company, where chorus work is a very important feature of the proceedings.

“Why did you take up this line?” I asked outright of one fellow, a big-boned chap who was formerly a cigarmaker in Chicago.

“Because I wanted to see the world,” he replied. “That’s the reason I prefer one-night stands to long runs.”

“But you must run up against some hard ones in the way of dressing-rooms among the small towns of the country,” I reminded him. And then I told of some “Florodora” girls I had heard about who were each assigned a chair on which to make their half-dozen or more changes of costume.

“Oh, exclaimed the former cigar-man, that’s nothing. I’ve had to dress on the turn of a stairs, where the bend made an extra wide step.”

“How easy is it for a man to get into the chorus?” was my next query.

“If he has a good second bass or high tenor voice, it’s a cinch.”

I then discovered that physique counts more than it used to, not good looks, for make-up will cover freckles or sallow skin, but a fellow must be well-built, and know how to hold himself.

The other chap, also from Chicago, used to be in the electric business, but with his brother he happened to belong to a lodge of the Order of the Maccabees. They could both sing and dance, and at an entertainment of the lodge did so in public. This put the stage bee in the head of the younger, and through cheek and shameless recitations of utterly fictitious engagements he had already filled, he procured a chance to do _Pish-Tush_ in a “Mikado” company that stranded after two performances.

Prevarication, in fact, seems to be the order of the day in the theatrical business, so that I cannot for the life of me make out why one member of the profession should ever believe what the other says, knowing the rule of the road, as it were, and what he would say himself under similar circumstances.

This Earl Stanley (the grandiloquent stage name my second chorus friend chose for himself) knew nothing about making-up and learned it by deftly following the motions of the man he was assigned to dress with, who actually remarked on the newcomer’s aptness in the art.

“You two fellows,” I observed, “were lucky to get an all-summer engagement with ‘The Governor’s Son’ on the roof, after ‘George Washington, Jr.,’ closed. All the chorus men were not held over, by a long shot.”

“All the good ball players were,” replied Lisle, and then it came out that Cohan is a baseball fiend, and to play good ball, all other things being equal, assists a man in getting a job in his companies, each of which sports its nine.

Oh, as to a chorus man’s pay, it ranges from eighteen to thirty dollars a week, all costumes being furnished by the management.

RECALCITRANT BENEFACTOR.

Sarah Bernhardt Encountered Series of Failures While Trying to Reward Man Who Befriended Her Family.

Last June Sarah Bernhardt sailed back to Paris after the most successful season she ever had in America. She took her profits with her in gold, too, and nobody should begrudge her the money, for, besides being a great artist, she is a generous soul, and is not chary of passing her good fortune on to others.

The following instance of this spirit of generosity is recorded by the San Francisco _Call_, and vouched for as authentic by one of THE SCRAP BOOK staff who has personal knowledge of the affair:

When Sarah Bernhardt was in the city some years ago she gave a breakfast to some of her friends at the California Hotel. It was served about noon, and there were but three persons present besides herself.

In the midst of the repast a bell-boy knocked at the door and said that there was a man down-stairs who refused to give his card and insisted on coming up to see her.

“Let him come, then,” was her reply.

The bell-boy explained that he had the appearance of a tough-looking tramp and might be crazy.

“Never mind his looks or his clothes, he may be a friend of mine,” was the reply.

In a few minutes a man of about sixty or more entered the room. He was very shabbily dressed, had not shaved for a week, and his shirt-front was well garnished with tobacco-juice.

The instant Bernhardt saw him she gave an exclamation and bounded forward. She threw herself upon his neck and covered his rough face with kisses.

The man was Mr. Levi, a furrier, who died recently in this city. Many of the _Call_ readers will remember his short, heavy figure as he used to walk the streets with furs thrown over his shoulder, looking for customers.

Bernhardt at once made a place at the table and began opening champagne for her guest. She introduced him as an old friend from Paris and explained that when she was a child and her family was in straits Mr. Levi had cared for them all one winter and kept them from absolute want.

Every few moments she would jump up, clasp him about the neck and kiss him again and again. There was no acting about these embraces, she was glad to see him, and she wanted no misunderstanding on that score.

Presently she asked him why he did not go back to Paris and see his relatives. He answered, sadly, that he was not able.

“Oh, that is easily remedied,” she said, and a moment later she had written out a check for fifteen hundred dollars and thrown it across the table to him.

He picked it up, and when he saw the amount he broke down completely. With the tears streaming down his cheeks he said:

“Sarah, I didn’t come here for charity, but just to see you a few moments.”

He handed the check back across the table.

“Oh, not enough? I make it bigger.”

She wrote another check for two thousand dollars and threw it over to him. He looked at the second check and merely said:

“Give me the other, Sarah.”

She smiled as she handed it to him, and then the old man did a magnificently independent thing. He slowly placed the two checks together, tore them into bits and handed the fragments back to the madame.

“No, no, Sarah; no money. Just your gratitude; that is all I ever wanted.”

Then she was at his side again, kissing his tears away and sobbing herself. It was a very pathetic scene and one not easily forgotten by those who witnessed it.

She said that she would “fix him yet” in that peculiar way of hers, which always means that she intends to have her own will.

Some months later I was in San Francisco and met old Levi waddling along the streets with his furs. He stopped me and said he wanted my advice.

“I have just got a letter from Sarah,” he said, “and I don’t know what the devil to do about it.”

He translated the letter as he read it, and it went something like this, as near as I can recall it:

“You tore up the last check I gave you, which was very mean of you. I was very angry at the way you treated my checks. No one else ever did such a thing to me but you, and you make me angry every time I think of you and your treatment of me. You humiliate me before strangers. They must have thought that my checks were worthless, or you must have thought so.

“I now enclose another and larger one. It is for twenty-five hundred dollars of your American money and if that is not big enough send it back and I will make it larger, but some check of some denomination you must accept, and if I gave you all the money I ever earned it would not repay you for the time years ago in Paris you saved me from want. I shall expect you to come to Paris at once and be my guest. Answer yes by cable and make us all happy. If you do not do this you must never call on me again, as I shall refuse to receive you. Affectionately,

“SARAH.”

“What shall I do?” asked the old man with tears in his eyes. “She is bound to have her way. She always was that way as a child.”

“Better send the despatch and then cash the check and go to Paris.”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said the old man, and he started for the telegraph office.

BETTER THEATER PROGRAMS

Innovation at Weber’s May Result in the Disappearance of Smudgy Blanket Sheets in Other Playhouses.

When the late Clement Scott, the well-known English dramatic critic, visited this country in 1900, he wrote his impressions of American theaters for the London _Sketch_ and devoted his second paragraph to the bill of the play. His comment ran as follows:

No fees for programs? I should think not, indeed! You find a huge stack of them under your very nose, and you can take any number you like, from one to one hundred. The difficulty Is to find the actual program when you have possessed yourself of one of these bulky pamphlets, for there is only a “halfpennyworth of program” amid “an intolerable deal of sack” in the way of advertisements and facetiæ.

But Mr. Scott failed to mention the worst feature of the American programs—the black smut left on the ladies’ gloves and the men’s knuckles from the smudgy type with which they are printed. The sixpence one must part with in order to become possessed of a London house-bill is really not begrudged in exchange for the neat card, folded at the two sides to make it convenient for the pocket and on which the most prominent features are the details respecting the play you have come to see.

In New York the program concession has been for years in the hands of a big firm which has paid the theaters large sums for the privilege of distributing bills of the play, and audiences have had to submit in patience to what this monopoly was pleased to give them. But there is hope ahead and Joe Weber deserves the credit for being the pioneer in a worthy innovation to make theatergoing the all round pleasure it ought to be.

Just before he closed the doors of his music hall for the summer, Mr. Weber amazed his patrons by providing them with a _program de luxe_, each enclosed in an oiled paper envelope, and printed in four colors on heavy coated paper. To be sure, it consists of forty-two pages, including the cover, but the bill of the play is in the exact center, making it easy to find, and the advertisements are most attractively displayed and illustrated.