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THE STAGE FIFTY YEARS AGO
a man of the name of Thompson, — with
a P, — and then how handy it will be to
have it in the house !
"
At the time when my service as dra-
matic critic began, the negro minstrel
show, descended, with some crossing of
the stock, from Christy's Minstrels of
New York and Ordway's ^olian Vocal-
^''-^a^
ists of Boston, was in a failing condition. '-^
I mean, of course, the entertainment of .j^to e^'^ I
that order which was fixed " in residence,"
as Shakespeare would say, and accepted
as a constant and necessary form of pub-
lic amusement. Morris Brothers, Pell and
Trowbridge still had their own little the-
atre in Province Court, and there, on every
evening and two afternoons of the week,
dispensed their broad, highly accentuated
fun and heavily treacled sentiment. Both
the fun and the sentiment seem in the
retrospect rather rudimentary and raw;
yet it would be absurd to deny that the
vein of feeling which Stephen C. Foster
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