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The foot-lights had been arranged by nailing narrow strips of board on the under side of the stage, and allowing them to project about six inches beyond where the curtain would come when it was lowered. On these strips the bottles, some large and some small, were to be placed, each with a candle in it.
Playwriters tell us that the dramatic situation is the thing, and that the spoken word is as unimportant to the play as the foot-lights except as a means of illuminating the situation. "Yes I have just left him, Harry. Uncle George looks very badly don't you think so? Is there anything very serious the matter? I sent Ben to Dr. Teackle's, but he was not in his office."
Murphy, but failed to see that worthy gentleman. So making a few steps towards the foot-lights he thanked the audience, in a trembling voice, for their kindness. He told them that he was no speaker and that Mr. Murphy had promised to do the lecturing part of the business.
Larry was deeply interested in this narrative, and felt so strong a disposition to make further inquiries, that he made up his mind to question the sailor, and was about to address him when a small bell tinkled, the music ceased, and three Ethiopian minstrels, banjo in hand, advanced to the foot-lights, made their bow, and then seated themselves on the three chairs, with that intensity of consummate, impudent, easy familiarity peculiar to the ebony sons of song.
The excited and hilarious applause of the audience, together with Eliza's frantic screams, struck panic to the heart of the already frightened dog, which, turning towards the foot-lights, made a flying leap into the audience.
Since the material world is an object for thought, and potential in relation to immediate experience, it can hardly lie in the same plane of reality with the thought to which it appears. The spectator on this side of the foot-lights, while surely regarded by the play as a whole, cannot expect to figure in its mechanism or to see himself strutting among the actors on the boards.
Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there is veiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in the waiting-rooms, at rehearsal, going home with the hawk-eyed mother, his girls are all painfully real. No "glamour of the foot-lights," generally the prosaic side of their life.
The stage is encumbered by the passage to and fro of machinists and scene-builders hastening about, running into one another in the dim, pallid light falling from above, which will give place directly, as soon as the curtain rises, to the dazzling of the foot-lights.
But though he has played Romeo thirty years ago, the perruquier, and the dentist, and the rouge-pot, and the friendly glare of the foot-lights will do wonders; and Podgers steady fellow! will be always at the right wing, at the right moment, know every line of his author, and contrive to give a very reasonable amount of satisfaction to all parties concerned.
His first commission! What an event in the artist's life! A surgeon's first fee, a lawyer's first retainer, a legislator's first speech, a singer's first appearance behind the foot-lights, an author's first book, are not any of them more full of interest to the aspirant for fame than the artist's first commission.
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