| Show S SUNDAY CONCERTS Wax Works Wares Hot Over the Proposition Proposi-tion to Desecrate the Sabbath The members of the Liberal band desire to give a series of sacred concerts on Sun day evenings There should be no objection objec-tion sacred concerts are exalting to a people peo-ple I under the guise of sacred concerts anything unbecoming tlc day should be attempted it would bo easy to revoke the license of the performers Tribune That sounds well I starts out so sweet and musical Of course the preachers who dont know beans as compared with the newspaper news-paper man will Jail in with that way of thinking The newspaper man who works seven days in the week and compels all his help to observe the Sabbath day in tho same religious re-ligious way should bo accepted as ex cathedra authority as to what is good for the rest of us We poor pagans must got our inspiration from columns of cockfights and manly defenses de-fenses of tho manly art every Sunday morning and wake up Monday morning get a rehash of the same pigeon stories of gospel truth Some very liberalminded people will favor sacred concerts because they will do away with the Puritanic idea that nothing noth-ing is good but preaching A man has not seen all the Christian side of the world until he ha taken in tho Bowery sacred concerts where the Katydids of the slump shuffle a Sunday skirt over their weekday tights put on powder aud pious smiles a yard thick turn their tearstained eyes heavenward and tear off great chunks of caliopic melody t the tune of When the swallows homeward fly I never before experienced such enrap s S S tured delights and the gallery gods wiped the floor with their feet in loud acclaim The New York sacred concert takes the wind out of a tough and grizzly saint and even though his spinal column be seton set-on eternal things when he enters a Bowery sacred concert he will feel his trousers bag at the knees and all tho serpents of hell ctiasing each other over his knee pads Of course the uptown sacred concerts are of a more spiritual nature and bear a man up to mansions in the skies at lightning light-ning rapidity S Several years ago Imet Kato Field at the Hotel Victoria aud nothing would do but that I should attend the sacred concert which she was to give at the Union square theatre As I took a fancy to Kate on account ac-count of tho hot light she was making against the Mormons I accepted the pasteboards paste-boards with many professions of delight and pleasure I nevertheless had qualms of conscience and repaired to the theatre with fear and trembling and yet with a quiet confidence that Miss Field would do nothing shocking The entertainment was styled A London Lon-don Monologue and Miss Field was gorgeously gor-geously attired in a toilet that the society critics raved over for a week The pro gramme went alongsmoothly enough copying copy-ing many old anecdotes that I had read in Thackerays English Humorists but when it descended to Miss Fields views of London it sot up such a whirl of piety afloat that it twisted my head agog for a week Such humming sensations as tho London cads song Wash my mothers collar raised my royal Ebcnezeruntil i flitted around the housetop like a sparrow in paradise par-adise To be frank in old time terseness I will say the devil take me i it didnt do me harm I was a Field man and the cult of that literary lady had a knack of setting up some very bawdy brazenness in such a chaste atmosphere that a man could not help being affected by it For those who want to sow their wild oats in the field of Sunday concerts it may be well to give them a send off in the direction direc-tion of hades but for myself I dont want any more sacred concerts as I am bad enough already When I want piety I will go to the churches and not to the riffraff that makeup make-up the bills at sacred concerts The sacred concert is the thin edge of the wedge that Is being inserted for splitting open Sunday and letting in every other kind of amusement The plea for good music is all a hoax as I always found in every city better music at the churches than at the sacred concert halls If a man wants to tako a contract for butchering and quartering the Sabbath day and doing quick work of it ho can do the devil no better service than to chain pion Sunday concerts WAX WORKS |
