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"What happened?" asked the Proprietor as the Press Agent sighed. "Well, Merritt always had presence of mind, and as the sport gathered up our hard earned shekels he grabbed me by the arm and hurried me from the building. He knew that a Bowery audience was apt to follow cat-calls with antique eggs and vegetables of last season's vintage, and five minutes later we were trying to drown our sorrow.
At last the welcome dusk blotted out the long shadows on the railroad tracks and the "Tigers" filed stealthily out of the yard to commence the skirmishing before supper, which always came as a prelude to the more important evening campaign. They darted up and down steps, rang doorbells, and raised eery cat-calls which echoed between the houses, and pelted pedestrians to their hearts' content.
The space, a dozen paces wide, which divided them, permitted the antagonists to understand each other, and the attention of the whole throng was fixed upon the wranglers. These verbal battles were one of the greatest pleasures of the Alexandrians, and they greeted every clever turn of speech with shouts of applause, every word which displeased them with groans, hisses, and cat-calls.
Alas, on the night of March 19, 1842, The Resources of Quinola met with the same reception as Vautrin had done before it; in spite of all his precautions, his enemies had gained admission to the Odeon, and throughout the whole evening, from the first act onward, there was a ceaseless storm of hisses and cat-calls. He had wasted four months, only to arrive at another defeat.
Immediately the rest took up the mocking cries, to the evident distress of poor Wun Sing, who stood in the background, his face yellower than common and his hands clasping and unclasping nervously. But neither cat-calls, crowings, nor cacklings, coaxed the invisible fowl from her palace-like retreat.
The space, a dozen paces wide, which divided them, permitted the antagonists to understand each other, and the attention of the whole throng was fixed upon the wranglers. These verbal battles were one of the greatest pleasures of the Alexandrians, and they greeted every clever turn of speech with shouts of applause, every word which displeased them with groans, hisses, and cat-calls.
The "hail to the chief," by the band was drowned by the cat-calls: "Put him out!" "Duck him!" "Ride him on a rail!" etc., etc., Yells of the Butlerites who had packed the hall. At last I got my "mad up," and rising, I lighted a cigar, puffed vigorously, and smiled upon my uproarious foes.
Into this period comes the Paris performance of Tannhäuser, which was a disgraceful failure I mean disgraceful to the Parisians, and especially to their Jockey Club, which resolutely went to work to prevent the music being heard by cat-calls and shoutings.
There was a moment of sickening silence; not so much as a leaf whirled in the gutter; it was broken by a great cheer from the assembled hundreds of workmen farther up the street, followed by a conglomerate of hootings, cat-calls, yells and falsetto hoorays from the fringe of small boys. The faces of the three men in front of the post-office grew white at their unspoken thought.
It was doubtless due to the earlier excitements of the evening that Peggy came so near disaster later. They had reached the second act most successfully, and the audience had laughed at every suggestion of a joke, and when the curtain was drawn, had joined in tumultuous applause, piercing cat-calls blending euphoniously with the clapping of hands, and the stamping of feet.
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