The stage child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes them weep; its tragedy thrills them; its declamation--as for instance when it takes the center of the stage and says it will kill the wicked man, and the police, and everybody who hurts its mar--stirs them like a trumpet note; and its light comedy is generally held to be the most truly humorous thing in the whole range of dramatic art.
But there are some people so strangely constituted that they do not appreciate the stage child; they do not comprehend its uses; they do not understand its beauties. We should not be angry with them. We should the rather pity them.
We ourselves had a friend once who suffered from this misfortune. He was a married man, and Providence had been very gracious, very good to him: he had been blessed with eleven children, and they were all growing up well and strong.
The "baby" was eleven weeks old, and then came the twins, who were getting on for fifteen months and were cutting their double teeth nicely. The youngest girl was three; there were five boys aged seven, eight, nine, ten, and twelve respectively--good enough lads, but--well, there, boys will be boys, you know; we were just the same ourselves when we were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant girls, as their mother said; the only pity was that they would quarrel so with each other.
We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. They were so full of energy and dash.
Our friend was very much out of sorts one evening when we called on him. It was holiday-time and wet weather. He had been at home all day, and so had all the children. He was telling his wife when we entered the room that if the holidays were to last much longer and those twins did not hurry up and get their teeth quickly, he should have to go away and join the County Council. He could not stand the racket.
His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She was sure better-hearted children no man could have.
Our friend said he didn't care a straw about their hearts. It was their legs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy.
He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it for a bit, or he should go mad.
He proposed a theater, and we accordingly made our way toward the Strand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could not tell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He said he loved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to have too much of anything, however much you liked it, and that he had come to the conclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was enough for any one.
He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child until he got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things as children in the world.
We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theater we came to.
The curtain went up, and on the stage was a small child standing in its nightshirt and screaming for its mother.
Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed.
We went a little further and dropped into another theater.
Here there were two children on the stage. Some grown-up people were standing round them listening, in respectful attitudes, while the children talked. They appeared to be lecturing about something.
Again we fled, swearing, and made our way to a third theater. They were all children there. It was somebody or other's Children's Company performing an opera, or pantomime, or something of that sort.
Our friend said he would not venture into another theater. He said he had heard there were places called music-halls, and he begged us to take him to one of these and not to tell his wife.
We inquired of a policeman and found that there really were such places, and we took him into one.
The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a horizontal bar.
Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying and cursing, but we restrained him. We assured him that he would really see a grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys and also their little sister on a bicycle and waited for the next item.
It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in fourteen different costumes, and we once more fled.
Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then; he felt sure he should kill the twins if he did. He pondered for awhile, and then he thought he would go and hear some music. He said he thought a little music would soothe and ennoble him--make him feel more like a Christian than he did at that precise moment.
We were near St. James' Hall, so we went in there.
The hall was densely crowded, and we had great difficulty in forcing our way to our seats. We reached them at length, and then turned our eyes toward the orchestra.
"The marvelous boy pianist--only ten years old!" was giving a recital.
Then our friend rose and said he thought be would give it up and go home.
We asked him if he would like to try any other place of amusement, but he said "No." He said that when you came to think of it, it seemed a waste of money for a man with eleven children of his own to go about to places of entertainment nowadays.
