There being
no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the town--represented
by the critics and the sporting and self-styled Bohemian elements--was
there. The performance was to have a popular comedian as the central
figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce a once favourite comic-opera
prima donna, who had been abroad for some years. This stage queen had once
beheld the town at her feet. She had abdicated her throne in the height
of her glory, having made the greatest success of her career on a certain
Monday night, and having disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly
afterward materializing in Paris.
There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as
the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had
seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she
had grown a bit passee; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had
met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked "as rosy
and youthful as ever." Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot of
masculinity classified under the general head of "men about town," crowded
into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length by
the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab tights, she
had a long and noisy reception.
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