The
audience is rough and ready; hats and caps are worn habitually; pipes
are diligently smoked--cigars are rare. Women are seldom seen here,
except upon the stage, where they sit in a semicircle in a somewhat
formal manner, each holding a bouquet in her lap carefully wrapped
round with white paper, each wearing flowers in her elaborately coiffe
hair and in the folds of her silken skirts, and each with arms and
shoulders bare. From time to time these women come forward and
_sing_--songs not always strictly adapted to the family circle,
perhaps. But the favorite vocalist is a comic man, who emerges from
behind the scenes in a grotesquely exaggerated costume--an
ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana
dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring
on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless
trousers; a flaming orange--colored vest; a huge standing collar, and
in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic
singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he
is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest
class.
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