I can yet remember (for I always scann'd an audience as rigidly as
a play) the faces of the leading authors, poets, editors, of those
times--Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, Paulding, Irving, Charles King,
Watson Webb, N. P. Willis, Hoffman, Halleck, Mumford, Morris, Leggett,
L. G. Clarke, R. A. Locke and others, occasionally peering from the
first tier boxes; and even the great National Eminences, Presidents
Adams, Jackson, Van Buren and Tyler, all made short visits there on
their Eastern tours.
Awhile after 1840 the character of the Bowery as hitherto described
completely changed. Cheap prices and vulgar programmes came in. People
who of after years saw the pandemonium of the pit and the doings
on the boards must not gauge by them the times and characters I am
describing. Not but what there was more or less rankness in the crowd
even then. For types of sectional New York those days--the streets
East of the Bowery, that intersect Division, Grand, and up to Third
avenue--types that never found their Dickens, or Hogarth, or Balzac,
and have pass'd away unportraitured--the young ship-builders, cartmen,
butchers, firemen (the old-time "soap-lock" or exaggerated "Mose" or
"Sikesey," of Chanfrau's plays,) they, too, were always to be seen in
these audiences, racy of the East river and the Dry Dock. Slang, wit,
occasional shirt sleeves, and a picturesque freedom of looks and
manners, with a rude good-nature and restless movement, were generally
noticeable. Yet there never were audiences that paid a good actor or
an interesting play the compliment of more sustain'd attention or
quicker rapport.
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