Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. IN AMERICA. Wig and Gown on the stage and off?" Too English "?American independence?The press?Playing at a lunatic asylum?An emotional Scotchman ?Fechter?Welcomed at the Lotos?A poem by William Winter?Toole interviewed on his American impressions?First appearance? The next day's criticism?Notes on the American t
...our? Canada?The stoiy of an editor and his wife?The coming holiday. " My American tour, which lasted over a year, was in every way successful, and in many ways pleasant. The Americans, when I went over, were not quite ' so English,' as they are now. I opened in Albery's play of Wig and Gown, which they didn't understand at all. It was ' too utterly English, you know.' The barrister's wig and gown is not an American institution. Learned gentlemen plead there in ordinary attire, and in some courts with a cigar in their mouths. This seems a little out of keeping with our notions of the dignity of the law ; but I once saw a priest smoking a cigarette in a Continental cathedraland, after all, that is even still more opposed to our prejudices. There is no harm, of course, in either case. Nothing is wrong, I suppose, unless you mean it to be ; and justice, I daresay, can be MR. TOOLE IN "OFF THE LINE." obtained as well without a wig as with it. I had to withdraw Wig and Gown after trying it for a week, though some of the scenes which the audiences did understand went capitally. " Off the Line, Dearer than Life, Oliver Twist, Paul Pry, Dot, were the pieces that pleased the Americans most; and the leading New York papers were unanimous in their complimentary notices. " I received many kindly tributes from both actors and playgoers, was frequently interviewed, had pleasant dinners given me here and there, and a most kindly reception at the Lotos Club. I went ...
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