Diva vs. The Property Man

The theatrical company which lately presented 'The Laughing Girl' here was a queer crowd. With but a few apparent exceptions, everybody connected with the show, from the authoress and star to the business managers, are stage-struck amateurs. One of the ladies of the company is very queer, and one night while here walked a couple of blocks from the hotel during the stormy weather without her hat and then came back and asked the bartender where her hat was. The leading man, who is about 100 pounds and as fragile as a soap bubble, was going to lick a man more than twice his size and weight over a trifle. A young man, who travels with the company as property man and who is treated by the principal members as their personal valet, also enacts the minor role of Martin, the servant, in the play. He plays his humble part quietly, easily and naturally, and in fact the character he portrays is the only one in the play which is not abnormal, if not grotesquely absurd. In a notice of Monday night's performance, the Post-Intelligencer took occasion to commend him slightly, and the next day in the lobby of the hotel, while several people were sitting around, the leading man—who portrays an idiotic character in the play and who in private life is the very opposite of the meek, bashful and humble wise man—rushed up to the young man with the Post-Intelligencer in his hand and exclaimed: 'Do you call yourself an actor? Do you think you can act? Why, you don't know the first thing about acting, and here this blank blank newspaper says you are one of the best actors in the company. If the man who wrote that was here I'd lick him. Go up and get my clothes and take them down to the theater.' And the fragile little dandy stormed around the hotel like a blue fly in a bottle. By the way, the realistic love-making of Miss Lipman toward this actor is explained by the rumor that they are engaged to be married.