New Faces | Page 2

just too lovely for anything to have a play.
They have 'em all the time over to Rivington Street an' down to the
Educational Alliance."
"Rebecca Einstein," said the Secretary darkly, "if you're goin' to fire off
your face about plays an' the Educational Alliances you can keep your
own minnits, that's all! Do ye think I'm goin' to write down your
foolishness? Well, I ain't."
Again the President plied her gavel. "Goils," she remonstrated, "this
ain't no way to act. Say, Miss Masters," she went on, "I guess the whole
lot of us is out of order now. What would you do about it if you was
me?"
"I should suggest," Miss Masters answered, "that the motion to adjourn
be carried and that the whole club go into committee on the question
raised by Miss Meyer."
"I move that we take our woik into committee with us," cried Miss
Kidansky, not to be deflected from her buttonholes. And from such
humble beginnings the production of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths
sprang.
Hamlet was not their first choice. It was not even their tenth and to the
end it was not the unanimous choice. During the preliminary stages of
the dramatic fever Miss Masters preserved that strict neutrality which
marks the successful Settlement worker. She would help--oh, surely
she would help--the Hyacinths, but she would not lead them. She had

never questioned their taste in the shape and color of their shirt waists.
Some horrid garments had resulted but to her they represented "self
expression," and as such gave her more pleasure than any servile
following of her advice could have done. She soon discovered that the
latitude in the shirt waist field is far exceeded by that in the dramatic
and she discovered too, that the Lady Hyacinths, though they seldom
visited the theatre had strong digestions where plays were concerned.
"East Lynne" was warmly advocated until some one discovered a
grandmother who had seen it in her youth. Then:
"Ah gee!" remarked the Lady Hyacinths, "we ain't no grave snatchers.
We ain't goin' to dig up no dead ones. Say Miss Masters, ain't there no
new plays we could give?"
Miss Masters referred them to the public library, but not many plays
are obtainable in book form, and the next two meetings were devoted to
the plays of Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, Vaughan Moody. When Miss
Masters descried this literature in the hands of the now openly
mutinous Secretary she felt the time had come to interfere with the "self
activity" of her charges. She promptly confiscated the second volume
of "G.B.S." "For," she explained "we don't want to do anything
unpleasant and the writer of these plays himself describes them as that."
"Guess we don't," the President agreed. "We got to live up to our name,
ain't we? An' what could be pleasanter than a Hyacinth?"
"Nothing, of course," agreed Miss Masters unsteadily.
"There's one in this Ibsen book might do," Jennie suggested. "It's called
'A Dolls' House,' that's a real sweet name."
"I am afraid it wouldn't do," said Miss Masters hastily.
"What's the matter with it?" demanded Susie Meyer.
"Well, in the first place, there are children in it--"

"Cut it! 'Nough said," pronounced the President. "Them plays wid kids
in 'em is all out of style. We giv' 'East Lynne' the turn down an' there
was only one kid in that. What else have you got in that Gibson book?
Have you got the play with the Gibson goils in it? We could do that all
right, all right. Ain't most of us got Gibson pleats in our shirt waists?"
"I don't see nothin' about goils," the Secretary made answer, "but there's
one here about ghosts. How would that do?"
"Not at all," said Miss Masters firmly.
"What's the matter with it?" asked one of the girls abandoning her
sewing-machine and coming over to the table. "I seen posters of it last
year. They are givin' it in Broadway. The costoomes would be real easy,
just a sheet you know and your hair hanging down."
"It's not about that kind of ghost," Miss Masters explained, "and I don't
think it would do for us as there are very few people in the cast and one
of them is a minister."
"Cut it," said the President briefly, "we ain't goin' to have no hymn
singin' in ours. We couldn't, you know," she explained to Miss Masters,
"the most of us is Jewesses."
"Katie McGuire ain't no Jewess," asserted the Secretary. "She could be
the minister if that's all you've got against this Gibson play. I wish we
could give it. It's about the only up-to-date Broadway success we can
find. The librarian says you can't never buy copies of Julia Marlowe's
an' Ethel Barrymore's an' Maude Adams' plays.