(mvo ERICAN By Ralph Davol -'•rip TO FRIENDS IN PAGEANTRY WATER COLUK STCUV BV CHAKLLS !I. ilEl'HENS FUH WASHINGTON AT GRAVS OAKDENb IN PAOEANT OF I'UlLAL'ELi'lllA A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PAGEANTRY BY RALPH DA VOL DAVOL PUBLISHING COMPANY, TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS • —i-fW -—*»-. Copyright, 1^14 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Part One. Introduction . - - The PhUosophy of Pageantry As One of the Fine Arts As An Educational Factor As a Nursery of Patriotism From the Sociologist's Standpoint As a Moral Agent - Page 11 - Page 17 - Page 41 - Page 73 - Page 87 - Page 99 - Page 115 The Technique of Pageantry The Subject Committees Publicity Part Two. Page 133 Dialogue Page 139 Costumes The Site Page 145 Music Page 151 Dancing Page 157 Presentation Extracts from Librettos - - Page 207 Page 163 Page 169 Page 183 Page 193 Page 201 UST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Photographs jrom American Pageants. Tournament at Meschianza during Revolution, Philadelphia, ------ Cover Washington at Gray's Gardens, Philadelphia, ...---- Frontispiece Pilgrims at Prayer, Taunton, Massachusetts, -------- Title Page Page Page Spirit of the Commimity Pageant, 9 Erasmus in Coimcil, Brooklyn, N. Y., 43 Landing of Pilgrims, Taunton, Mass., 10 Spirits and Indians, Schenectady, N. Y., 44 Gold Deposed by Love, Masque of St. Louis, 15 Frieze of Prophets, Richmond, Va., 44 Scenes from Mission Pageant, San Gab- Chariot Race, Nashville, Tenn., 47 riel, Cal., 16 Pageant Grounds, Medway, Mass., 48 "Dreams", McDowell Pageant, Peter- Processional, Hudson-Fulton Pageant, 51 boro, N. H., 19 March Past, Evansville, Illinois, 52 Spanish Soldiers, Tampa, Fla., 20 March Past, Evansville, Illinois, 53 Persian Pageant, Brookline, Mass., 25 Night Pageant, Detroit, Mich., 54 Lafayette's Visit, Lancaster, Mass., 26 Mother Goose, Greensboro, N. C., 57 "Peace", Suffrage Pageant, Washington, Old Woman in Shoe, Greensboro, N. €., 57 D. C., 29 Reflections, Baltimore, Md., 58 Grand Finale, Philadelphia, 30 Dancers with Balloons, Washington, D. C., 61 Blennerhassett's Decision, Marietta, Playground Pageant, Chicago, 61 Ohio, 33 Court of King George, Taunton, Mass., 62 Old-Time Punishments, Northampton, Kitchen Spirits, Eliot, Me., 65 Mass., 34 Declaration of Independence, Charlottes- Franklin at Court of Louis XIV., Phila- ville, Va. 66 delphia, 39 View of Audience, Erasmus Hall, Brook- Mississippi Symbolized, St. Louis, Mo., 39 lyn, N. Y., 69 Don de Dieu, Quebec, Can., 40 View of Pageant Performers, Rock Hill, Half-Moon, Hudson-Fulton Pageant, 40 S. C, 70 LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS Page View of Pageant Performers, Rock HiD, S.C, Pageant in Parade Grounds, St. Augus- tine, Fla., Pageant in Parade Grounds, St. Augus- tine, Fla., Pageant of the Year, Brookline, Mass., Pageant of Apollo, Berkeley, Cal., Pageant Grounds, Taunton, Mass., Pageant of Education, Boston Normal School, Bringing the Wassail Bowl, Fitchburg, Mass., Morris Dancers, Louisville, Ky., Colonial Wedding, Northampton, Mass., Mother Love and Patriotism, Lawrence, Mass., Surrender of Burgoyne, Saratoga, N. Y., Home from the War, Warwick, Mass., Grand Army, Brattleboro, Vermont, Lincoln Admitting Nevada, Reno, French Voyageurs, Winona, Minn., Catamount Tavern, Bennington, Vt., Jesuit Missionary, Taunton, Mass., Swinging Round the Circle, Oshkosh, Wis., 102 Smoking Peace Pipe, Darien, Conn., 107 Pioneers Going West, Deerfield, Mass., 108 Dance of "Bats," Salem, Mass., 113 71 70 71 72 75 76 79 80 80 83 83 84 89 90 95 96 101 101 Landing of Norsemen, Arlington, Mass., Paul Revere's Ride, Arlington, Mass., Court of Polydectes, Baltimore, Md., Pageant of Hay-making, Eliot, Me., Honors for Washington, Oxford, Mass., Gosnold Exploring Marthas Vineyard, Spinning Squaw, Boston, Mass., Phyrric Dance, Millbury, Mass., Landing of Columbus, Taunton, Mass., Columbus at Court, Johnson, Vt., Exit of Mexicans, Claremont, Cal., "Mutton Chop" Indians, Croton, N. Y., Battle of Ships, Machias, Me., Japanese Folk Dance, Cincinnati, 0., Washington Crossing Delaware, Newark, N. J., Rehearsal of Dance, Cape Cod, Mass., Ante-Bellum Coach, Tupelo, Miss., Locomotive, St. Johnsbury, Vt., Cover Designs, Various Pageants, Advertising Designs, Various Pageants, Poster, St. Louis, Mo., Devil and New England Conscience, Taunton, Mass., Solo Dancer, Peterboro, N. H., Pantalettes, Indianapolis, Ind., Page 114 114 119 120 120 125 125 126 131 132 137 137 138 143 144 149 150 150 155 156 161 162 167 168 168 173 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Faun and Nymph, Meriden, N. H., 173 Poster, Philadelphia, Pa., 174 Dutch Market-Day, Croton, N. Y., 179 William Penn and Indians, Philadelphia, 180 Treaty with Indians, Taunton, Mass., 185 Raising Flag on School, Colraine, Mass., 186 Knights of St. John, St. Johnsbury, Vt., 186 English Carole, Northampton, Mass., 191 Dancing Minuet, Bennington, Vt., 192 Dance of Cannon Crackers, Medway, Mass.,192 French Pavane, Quebec, Can., 197 Merry Shepherdesses, Rock Hill, S. C, 197 Greek Dancers, Boston, Mass., 198 Floating Island, Lake Champlain, Vt., 203 Pastoral Scene, Nashville, Tenn., 204 Page Dance with Garlands, Oxford, Mass., 204 Gov. Hutchinson's Coach, Milton, Mass., 209 Lost Wife Found, Thetford, Vt., 210 Sleepy Hollow Legend, New York, 215 Indians en Deshabille, Claremont, Cal., 216 May Festival, Central Park, New York, 221 Franklin with Kite, Brooklyn, N. Y,, 222 A Sudden Shower, New York, 227 Knights of Economy, Boston, Mass., 228 Behind the Scenes, Philadelphia, Pa., 228 Robin Redbreasts, Meriden, N. H., 233 Indians with Banner, University, North Dakota, 233 Sancho Panza, Mt. Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass., 234 8 THE SPIRIT OF THE COMMUNITY PAGEANT SHOULD SPRING FROM THE SWEETNESS, CHARM AND SANCTITY OF THE HOME. v;;yf^ifi| PILGRIMSCOMINGASHORK SINGING THE OLD ENGLISH HVMN ■H-.UhRAl. .s 1 RLE I- \S 1 l.L llul.l) A\ AlUIENCE IN RAPT ATTENTION. PROLOGUE. Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span, Laugh, and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man. John Masefield. MAP of the United States dotted at every point where a pageant has blossomed during the last decade might be as thickly-speck- led as a fertile meadow in the season of dandelions. With charac- teristic impetuousness America rushes headlong into this communal pastime obeying the impulsive force inherent in a new affection. Whether the pageant is an ephemeral fad or a permanent acquisition to the Arts at least it has grown with the rapidity of Jonah's gourd. A discussion, in so few pages of a theme so expansive and kaleidoscopic, must necessarily be very incomplete and fragmentary. The pageant is a gem of many facets; and invites examination through numerous avenues of thought. The writer of this book, having covered as newspaper correspond- ent a number of these community festivals in various States, has collected some of his notes and observations on the psychology, structural composition and by-products of the pageant, as a slight contribution to the current debate upon the question. Perhaps he should apologize for inflicting upon an innocent public what may seem like a doctrinal sermon on a subject having no accepted American traditions and as yet in the 11 Prologue bread-and-butter stage of development. The writer anticipates that many will differ widely from his views and that other handbooks will be issued by persons who have specialized in this work. He surely does not presume to set up as a dogmatic authority, and merely avails himself of the privilege, allowed to every citizen of a free country, of expressing his opinions (both favorable and unfavorable) as frankly, sincerely and clearly as possible, always bearing in mind that it is much easier to criticise than to create. But what is the use of having opinions if you don't express them? That is the pertinent point. Pageantry is expression — a visible manifestation of the community soul, and should not be simply a sensational exhibition. Through this milieu not only the collective community, but each individual member, finds opportunity for self-expression. The same laws of expression govern the race, the nation, the tribe, the family, the individual. Na- ture makes half the man; expression is the other half. We are attracted to persons for two reasons : Because of the physical appearance (which is the affair of Dame Nature) ; and because they have expressed well what we have felt but were unable to express (and this is largely a matter of personal acquirement) . Expression is that part of the man which lives after him and binds him to the great mass of humanity. We like Shakespeare because he expressed himself so well through the medium of words, Turner through color, 12 Prologue Franklin through philosophy, Edison through his electrical wonders. Expression is power; that is, the sending out of impressions we have received. A thousand feel an impression where one can properly express it. This ability may be acquired through right teaching and practice and concentration. To this end, the pageant is a training school in which a person may improve himself in conveying his thoughts and feelings through words, tones and action. The pageant on its dramatic side arouses emotion and will, and tends to evolve individual personality. Pageantry is opportunity for self-discovery. It typ- ifies in a broad sense the love of life itself, and should stand, as does the American mag- azine "Life", for the finer old-fashioned sentiment and pictures queness and shun screech- ing modernism. The illustrations are selected from a thousand photographs, each one chosen for a special illustrative purpose or bearing upon the theme. Some of the reproductions are from scenes which do not conform to the definition of a pageant given in this book, but which were commonly and locally known as such. When a pageant was written by one person and staged by another, the name of the former is given because the author usually works for pleasure, the director for money. The writer of this book contemplates issuing a larger, more comprehensive work on pageantry, and would be pleased to communicate with persons having attractive or unusual photographs for sale. 13 Prologue Acknowledgments are hereby made for the loan of photographs by The Ladies' Home Journal, Philadelphia Ledger, New York Times, Boston Herald, St. Augustine Record, Playground Magazine, Children's Home of Cincinnati. The writer is under obligations to many friends who have assisted him by an interchange of ideas, many of which have been embodied in this volume. Ralph Davol, Taunton, Massachusetts. 14 o a: : -2 . O gin p a mmjsswtmmmmt''-'- ' '-'^^•^■■^^'^^f^^^^-'' RIAUING THIi STARVED SOI.niKRS OKTHI': DON CASPAR DF. PORTOI.A KXPICnillON. INDIAN SI;N DANCK AT SPANISH FIKSTA IN MISSION PAGKANT AT SAN GAIiRIKl,. C All I < )RN I A, BV JOHN G. McCORIATV IHIS PAGKANT WAS GI\ KN DAILY FOR SK\l:RAI. MONTHS PART ONE. The Philosophy of Pageantry. Out of the mists that round thee lie, come forth, Spirit of years gone by; Thy magic wand wave o'er the scene, transform it to a castle green. Where happy folk, in pageant gay, make old-time English holiday. Spencer. ODERN pageantry aims to increase the world's store of happiness by interpreting the meaning of human life and by bringing art and beauty into the minds of all the people. Serving as a measure of man's forward movement by comparison of vanished days it keeps the conscience of the race alive and holds attention on the mysteries of the precious gift of existence. Dedicated to the service of the commonalty it marks the awakening of the people to self-assertion in their recreations, just as they are rising to take business and politics into their own hands — to participate in their own entertainment, not merely pay to see professional actors. As a manifestation of the lyrical and emotional im- pulses in this world of the senses pageantry allows free play to mystic symbolism in which aspiring souls delight. The community consciousness is thus expressed ui visible form. Considering the etymology of the word, we find in the 14th century "pagyn" without the excrescent "t". Latin correspondent pagina, i. e., page: As of a book, or a 17 A Handbook of American Pageantry division of a play — a scene. The senses in which the word came to be later used, viz: Stage, scaffold, or an act played on a platform, seem a natural development. Tooke, the arche- ologist, says the word is present participle "pacceand", of the Anglo-Saxon "paccean", meaning: To draw by false appearances or by imitation. He traces the evolution — pac- ceand, pacheant, pageant. During Elizabethan days, the word universally denoted some- thing empty, ephemeral, meretricious — a showy thing lacking durability. As human nature runs, probably no pageant of the present day was ever given at which a misanthropic preadamite was not found on the outskirts of the gathering unreservedly proclaiming that he "wouldn't give two cents to see the whole blamed mess of foolishness". The best modern pronunciation makes but two syllables of the word, giving the first syllable a short "a". The pronunciation "payjent" is considered rather bourgeois. That the word has been abused and overworked, of late, no one will question. One leading newspaper has forbidden its further use in conspicuous headlines. An enterpris- ing philologist would confer a benefit upon the devotees of pageantry by coining a new word and set of subordinate generic terms exclusively for this art. Journalists are apply- ing "pageant" indiscriminately to celebrations as widely different as the Bohemian Club High Jinks of San Francisco, Pasadena Rose Fiesta, Montreal Ice Carnival, South- ern Mardi Gras antics, elephantine Durbar, fairy-like Sakura Festival, Lord Mayor's 18 •■DREAMS' FROM PAGEANT I MTERPRETING McDOWELL'S MUSIC. PEIERBURO. N H.. BY PROF GEuKUE P. BAKER. THE BEAUT\ OF THE SETTING WAS ENHANCED BY A VIEW OF MT. MONADNOCK. SPANISH SOI.DIKRS AT CASPARI I.I.A I'AGF.ANT. TAMPA. FLORIDA. BY MRS R. A i-.i.IIS. A PLATOON OK TROOPS Willi CORSLI r, MORION. MAI.BKRI) AND JACKKOOTS IS VKRVMARITM.. The Philosophy of Pageantry Processions, the Great White Way, colored porters' Masked Ball, a Governor's state fu- neral, Easter Millinery Parade or suffragette demonstration. Therefore our first consider- ation is : What should constitute a pageant according to best current usage? No two directors could unite in a common definition. Purists and extremists, to whom the pageant is a fetish, may easily be drawn into ardent and protracted controversy upon this question. Modern pageantry is the rehabilitation of an art which was born when the pea- cock began to crop out in the human family. If we question history to ascertain its traditions, we find that the moment the race had accumulated enough of a past to glorify it, the time was ripe for this folk festival. Bible days are replete with material for historic pageants. The quick preception of Louis Parker, who was dubbed "Grand-Pag- eant-Master-Extraordinary -to-the-British -nation", has seized upon such an episode as Joseph in Egypt; another uses David, the Shepherd King; still another has pageantized the story of Noah's Ark. Aside from sacred history, we find potential pageant material in the processions on the Assyrian and Egyptian temples; in the frieze of the Parthenon; the Dionysia of Greece; the Roman Satui-nalia, the Lupercalian sports of the Circus Maxi- mus and cruel orgies of the Coliseum; in the fetes of France and fiestas of the plaza del toros in Spain. The frescoes of Florentine chapels record many beautiful Italian pag- eants. High Mass is a spectacular periodic pageant — the humbler classes like to see their 21 A Handbook of American Pageantry religion as well as feel it. The Roman triumphal procession with foreign captives shack- led to the chariots — imposing spolia opima, — was a processional pageant par excellencef which added pith and meaning to the proud boast: I am a Romian Citizen. The Ro- man loved his theatre, but loved the amphitheatre better, and the circus best of all. The theatre accommodated five to ten thousand, the amphitheatre fifty thousand, the circus a hundred thousand. As a dramatic production, the American pageant stands relatively in the position of the Roman circus. During the Renaissance, when society began to take on a semblance of civilized order after the chaos of the Dark Ages, church and court provided popular enter- tainment. Half the days of the year seem to have been festal days; the other half, days of prayer and repentance for follies of the day before. Religious rituals were formulated; the age of chivalry brought jousts and tournaments. Knights Templars in quest of the Holy Grail, the career of Charlemagne, rise of the Ottoman empire, the Canterbury Pil- grimage, Field of the Cloth of Gold, Columbus at the Court of Isabella, are incidents rich in suggestions for pageantry. From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, the forerunner of the modern pageant flourished in England in the form of miracle and morality plays. These "mysteries", first performed by the priesthood in pilgrimages to holy shrines, were later taken up by the common people as a secular diversion. They were often enacted 22 The Philosophy of Pageantry by guilds or trading companied in gratulation to royalty, or some local dignitary, and dealt With Bible history from Creation to Judgment Day. Sharp in his "Dissertations on Early Pageants or Mysteries", writes: The maner of these playes weare, every Company had his pagiant, or parte, which pagiantes weare high scafoldes with 2 rowmes, a higher and a lower, upon 4 wheels. The upper room was the stage, and the lower, the dressing-room. These floats, as we should call them today, followed one another over a pre-arranged route, but instead of moving steadily along, each float made a stop in a street or town long enough to enact the scene, and was then wheeled to the next stopping place. The fii'st float gave the first chapter of the story; the second, the second chapter; and so on to the end— different parts of the pageant were thus being given at different places at the same timxe. The story Was told largely by mummery, though the actors sometimes came down from the scaf- fold to "rage in the stretes." Some rode horseback. Costumes were tawdry and of con- ventional forms. Divin-e personages were identified by gilt hair and tinsel beards; demons by hideous false heads; angels by gold skin and wings. The souls of departed heroes were represented by black or white coats according to their supposed destiny. Mythological characters and abstract ideas of patriotism and virtue, were later represented by 23 A Handbook of American Pageantry allegorical pageants which in England were always introduced by formal, spoken pro- logues. In medieval days, Queen Margaret at Coventry quaintly writes that she saw "alle the pageants playde sav Domesday which might not be played for lack of daye". The earliest pageant in which there are speaking parts mentioned was presented at the triumphal entry of Henry VI. into London (1432). At Anne Boleyn's coronation (1533), the pageant contained figures of Apollo and the Muses. When, in the Elizabethan age, Shakespeai-e's plays appeared, they could with difficulty compete for public favor with these old itinerant pageants so firmly gripped in popular fancy. Walker, the antiquarian, says: "When Mr. Garrick exhibited a show in honor of Shakespeare (1760), it was universally called a 'padjunt' ". The great master's mind was teeming in pageant- ry of finest imaginative type. In the elaborate Lord Mayor's Pageant (1631) the town of London was represented as a beautiful woman riding on a white charger attended by other cities in the Kingdom, as York, Oxford, Westminster, each imperson- ated by young gii-ls wearing the escutcheons of their cities. Under the Stuart regime, rollicking masques superseded the morality plays, to the grave alarm of grim Non-con- formists who fled the ungodly gaieties to found New England, While the pageant as an expression of fondness for sensationalism took root early in the human mind, its identity has undergone a series of national modifications although 24 -J h ■- 3 < X U 5 en < < Sis Z J < u: zz ~ o aS — a = a 2; < ? N < "WELCOME TO LAFAYETTE." PAGEANT AT LANCASTER. MASSACHUSETTS. BY MRS. E. J. H. (ONES. LAFAYETTE'S VISIT IS A VALUABLE ASSET FOR WRITERS OF AMKRICW PAGEANTS. The Philosophy of Pageantry the modern version preserves many features of the historic prototype. The essential difference between the old English and modern English pageant is, that the former was religious and frankly unreal, while the latter aims to present secular history, and attempts to reproduce the core of the original occasion in realistic form. English pageants of re- cent years have been more resplendent, more carefully wrought out, than those in America— English History has been longer in the making and affords richer material. The history of America is romantic rather than classic, yet abounding in many ele- ments of dramatic and human interest. The germ of pageantry is manifest in the California Forest Plays, the annual Oregon Round-up, Mountain and Plain Festival of Denver, the Arizona Snake-Dance, Frolics of the Artists' Guild of Chicago, New Or- leans Mardi Gras fete, Ponce de Leon Fiesta at Florida, Veiled Prophets of St. Louis, the egg-rolling at the White House, revels of the Copley Society at Boston, the May Fes- tivals of the East, and commencement exercises throughout the country. A procession through the streets of floats, on which historic occasions are rigidly impersonated by "live people trying to look like dead ones", is commonly called a pageant in America, for example at Philadelphia, or the Hudson-Fulton celebration. This method undoubtedly reaches more people, but lacks the charm of background, dialogue and human action pos- sible in a stationary arena. Sometimes a procession crosses a fixed platform, as at 27 A Handbook of American Pageantry Lawi'ence, Massachusetts, or Madison, Wisconsin; again a pageant may be given on a cam- pus, with the audience seated along four sides as at the University of Virginia, or Erasmus Hall, Brooklyn.A In America pageants lean more toward advancing community ideals than in England and especially in featuring symbolism and prophecy. Two types of standard pageantry now in vogue are: First, what we may call the academic pageant, given in schools and colleges as a means of visualizing history and of Americanizing the foreign -born element of the population by a dramatic appeal. Secondly, in a larger way, comes the community, or anniversary, pageant. One obscure New England town which held this sort of pageant several years ago was so de- lighted that it has become an annual affair, and each summer the village pastor pulls on the wig and waistcoat of one of the early governors just as Anton Lang at Oberammergau periodically leaves his potter's wheel to impersonate the Christ. Dr. Van Dyke has spoken of the amateur pageant as a "trying" affair. The actors may not be Bemhardts or Edwin Booths; Pocahontas may be shod in high-heeled shoes; a glimpse of blue jeans may appear beneath King Philip's blanket; folk dancers may not trip harmoniously as Genee's corps de ballet; grapes may be gathered from willow trees; a slight historical anachronism may occur; but the community pageant, as a whole, was never a com- plete regret, and never failed to inspire finer fellowship or make for life more abundant. 28 < ^ r a; Z H ^H J a t z §:: K o ■ a. < H c« c/: U Z >• o z ^ - 'J FINALE OF PAGEANT AT BEI.MONT PARK. PHILADELPHIA. BY DR. ELLIS P. OBERHOI.TZER. STLPENDOUS IT \VA,S SPOKEN OF AS A SERIES OF FINALES. THIS PAGEANT WAS SO The Philosophy of Pageantry Research as to the beginning of modern American Pageants indicates that the spirit was manifest as early as 1627 at the Merry Mount revels. The Meschianza given by Britsish soldiers at Philadelphia in the Revolution was an old English pageant. The first use of the name "pageant" the writer has been able to find applied to a community festival in America was at Marietta, Ohio, (1888). This was before modem pageants be- came the rage in England. The purpose was to mark the hundredth anniversary of the city of Marietta by re-enacting scenes from pioneer settlements; treaties of peace with the Red men; organization of civil government; the plot of Blennerhasset and his scheme of empire. The affair was considered of enough importance to call out delegates from several states to witness the production. That the experiment met immediate suc- cess this contemporary record bears witness: The Historical Pageant had a more direct centennial character than any other work of the Women's Association. The plan was formed with careful historical accuracy by those who had re- ceived and faithfully kept from childhood the local traditions of the fathers. Selections were made of those known to resemble the characters to be impersonated, either in feature, stature or other marked particulars, and in many cases from actual descendants. In many families there still existed precious heirlooms of clothing and personal ornament, which, for the occasion, were brought forth and worn by the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those whose worthy lives were to be thus com- 31 A Handbook of American Pageantry memorated and illustrated. The Historical Pageant was witnessed by our Centennial guests on Tuesday evening, July 17. Unusual commendations were elicited, and the Ohio Centennial Commis- sioners of the Cincinnati Exposition called for its repetition in that city in October following, where also it was repeated a second and third time, with large and ever increasing attendance. The World's Fair at Chicago (1893), contributed not a little in preparing America to appreciate later pageants. Miss Margaret M. Eager gave several in the 90's in New England, but we may rightly consider these out-door dramatic festivals as products of the twentieth century. Although modem pageants did not burst into flower until within a few years the call was felt early last century when the "Westminster Review" declared: He who shall devise a form of popular amusement attractive at once to every grade of society, will merit the civic wreath as well as he who leads forth a colony or opens new avenues of labor. In America, the seed was germinating (1833) when Rufus Choate delivered an ad- dress in which we find him thoroughly imbued with the pageant idea. He says: But there is one thing more which every lover of his country and every lover of literature would wish done for our early history. He would wish to see such a genius as Walter Scott undertake in earn- est to illustrate that early history by a series of romantic compositions the scenes of which should be laid in North America somewhere in the time before the Revolution, and the incidents and characters of which should be selected from the mingling records and traditions of that, our heroic age. He would wish to see him clear away the obscurity which two centuries have been collecting over it, and 32 ■■BLENNERHASSErX'S FATAL DECISION." SCENE FROM FIRST PAGEANT IN AMERICA (USING THE NAME PAGEANT) WHICH THE WRITER HAS BEEN ABLE TO DISCOVER. MARIETTA, OHIO, JULY, 188X, Slot KS AM) IMM.OKV 01. 1) TIMIi MKTHODS OF I'LNISIIMI' NT MAKK GOOD M \ I I RIAL lOR THK I'AC;l,A\ I MASTKR. The Philosophy of Pageantry unroll a vast, comprehensive and vivid panorama of our New England Lifetimes, from the sub- limest moments to the minutest manners. He would wish to see him begin with the Landing of the Pilgrims, and pass down to the War of Independence, from one epoch and one generation to another, like Old Mortality among the graves of the unforgotten faithful, wiping the dust from the urns of our fathers, gathering up whatever of illustrious achievement, of heroic suffering, of unwavering faith, their history commemorates, and weaving it all into an immortal and noble national literature. * * * They would give a series of pictures of New England so full, so vivid, so true, so instructive that they would grave themselves upon the memory and dwell in the hearts of our whole people forever. It is time that literature and the arts should co-operate with history, and like the writer of Pentateuch put in requisition alternately music, poetry, eloquence and history, and speak by turns to the senses and fancy and reason of the world. * * * For our lawyers, politicians and for most purposes of mere ultility, business and intellectual, our history now perhaps unfolds a sufficiently "ample page". But I confess I should love to see it assume a form in which it should speak directly to the heart and affections and imagination of the whole people. After sketching the traditions of Pageantry through centuries and considering the divers uses to which the art has been put, it appears that the pageant, in common accept- ance, means a spectacular show — in early times upon a moving platform; later, a proces- sional display; and latterly, a stationary dramatic production. By way of crystallizing a definition let us enumerate some of the qualities a pageant should and should not have — consider its possibilities and obvious limitations. The pageant should not be given under cover of darkness. This, however, is a moot point 35 A Handbook of American Pageantry among many masters. Some are emphatically in favor of evening performances. They find it much easier to secure suitable sites for a pageant given at night when man's ugli- ness can be concealed in vast pockets of darkness, and the atmosphere of romance en- hanced by fantastic lights, which theatrical managers are shrewd to make use of. Another advantage is that working classes have better opportunity to attend, which thus increases the financial returns. The magic and mystery of artificial illumination create some of the eerie and illusive witchery of the Arabian Nights entertainments. Startling glimpses of historic scenes under searching calcium lights are like Carlyle's "history by lightning fiashes". But it is not the purpose of pageantry to bewilder and dazzle and focus the attention on modem mechanical wizardry of illumination — the spectator at night is never allowed to feel that the show is other than make-believe. Since pageant scenes en- deavor to reproduce actual occurrences more than theatrical illusions, the night per- formance is scarcely appropriate, as few events that will be reproduced occurred after night-fall. The audience cannot read the programs in the dark; the mind is confused and cannot follow symbolic meanings which require the fullest comprehension. Nor is it pleasing, or desirable, to have promiscuous crowds of young people scattered about the fields and woods in theatrical trappings during the night. The real pageant is something higher than a dazzling dream and should be a sun-lit vision of the open day. 36 The Philosophy of Pageantry A major, or first-class, pageant cannot be given in a theatre. It is cramped and smothered indoors. Like the American eagle, a national festival must have freedom. As the captive eagle within a cage has not the charm of the bird soaring majestically between heaven and earth, so the pageant is degraded when cabined within four walls. Mother Earth must be its tutelary saint. History is more convincing to an audience when the players stand with feet on terra firma than when clattering on boards behind footlights. Another essential feature — it should be co-operative — a sharing of emotions and feelings — pleasures and profits of the entertainment among those who participate and among those who behold. Far better that the pageant be conceived and directed by local talent than by professional showmen whose chief interest centers in box-office receipts. An ideal pageant should be free— at least on one day to those who cannot pay for seats. Seats may be sold to the fashionable world, but nobody should be excluded for lack of a half-dollar. That is important from a democratic point of view.'' The ideal dem- ocracy should provide education, emplojrment, and entertainment. At a town near Bos- ton, an exclusive, un-American pageant was given at which only those invited could attend. When it becomes necessary to examine social credentials of actors and audience the community pageant defeats its purpose. Pageantry takes the world as it comes. An approach to the ideal pageant was given in a humble way at Warwick, Massachusetts, (1912). 37 A Handbook of American Pageantry To celebrate the 150th anniversary the town appropriated ten dollars; the townspeople did the rest and returned two dollars to the treasury. No admission was charged; the spec- tators sat on a grassy hillside and those present will testify that it was a worthy little pageant. At St. Louis the vast auditorium was divided equally between free and pay seats. From the above consideration we arrive at these criteria. The pageant should be given out of doors — should not be given at night — should be artistic but not too artificial — should be democratic and co-operative (an indigenous, home-made product) — not tire- somely didactic — not immoderately sensuous- — should not exclude anyone unable to pay — should not be a professional commercial venture, and should be conducted by home- making men and women. Here, then, is a definition: The true pageant is an idealized community epic, conceived and presented dramatically and simply in the open fields and sunshine, by the co-operative effort of creative local townspeople. 38 FRANKLIN AT THK COURT OF LOUIS XIV. NOTE HOW A FEW SIMPLE PROPERTIES SUGGEST A COURT YARD. MISSISSIPPI SYMBOLIZED AT ST. STERN. THE LOUIS. CRAFT THE "FATHER OF WATERS" STANDS AT PROW. LITTLE ST. LOUIS IN THE W'AS PROPELLED BY PADDLES AND BY BOY SWIMMERS. ■DON 1)1-; DlKl'." IN QIKHKC PACI-.ANT ■II AI.K-MOON" IN IIinSON-I'Ll.rON PAliKANT. CHAPTER II. Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts. Time, who doth bmd men with his chain of years, Fate, who doth make all life to bloom and close, Death, who doth reap for time and Fate: These three wage war against the starry crown of song, And stand in dreaded leaguer, with drawn swords, before the garden where the Rose of Art, Like a blown flame, hath being and delight. But here, behold, a miracle: Time sleeps; Fate nods; and Death hath had his will. Tonight, the centuries, like pages of a book. Turn backward; and the Rose of Art doth breathe, with a new perfume, springtides long forgot. Thomas Wood Stevens. AGEANTRY may be considered both as one of the useful and as one of the fine arts. As a useful art it must prove its services to man; as a fine art its claim to beauty. Strictly speaking, a useful art is a mechanical or applied art only — one in which appearance or form is second to utility. Moralists contend that beauty which does not promote efficiency of the race has no justification of being. Pageantry promotes efficiency in the same sense that the school-house does, teaching something that everyone ought to know. A sense of power resides in beauty, an ideal beautifully expressed be- comes most powerful. A fine art is an embodiment of the thoughts and emotions of an 41 A Handbook of American Pageantry artist in an objective product such as a symphony, poem, statue, where appearance and mental effect on eye and ear are of first consideration — an external product of the hu- man mind in contrast to Nature which is a creation of the Almighty. In the creation of beautiful objects the human mind touches most closely the Infinite. Browning sings: "If you get simply beauty and naught else, you get about the best that God in- vents". Works of art are distinguished from other objects when the person contemplating them is transported above sex and above the given medium into the spirit world of im- personal beauty. Man does not live by bread alone; he must have "white hyacinths to feed his soul". Beauty which makes for happiness, then, is the universal criterion among the fine arts. Applying this test to pageantry what do we find? Pageantry that is not beautiful is inconceivable, though it can hardly be termed a fundamental, substantive art like paint- ing, sculpture, or musical composition. The latter are called creative arts. But man cannot absolutely create anything. As the Spanish proverb has it, there is nothing new under the sun — except what is forgotten. Man merely puts into new shapes and applications things which already exist in the world about him. Each succeeding generation resets the stage for the same old play. Pageantry is a composite symposium partaking of the elements of various arts just as it is a focal point of divers recreational interests. The full 42 DETAIL FROM PAGEANT AT ERASMUS HALL. BROOKLYN. SHOWING ERASMUS AND MONKS IN CONCLAVE. A FORMAL TREATMENT OCCASIONALLY MAKES INTERESTING VARIETY. SPIRITS OF THE WIND AND INDIANS, SCHENICCTADV. NKW VORK. SV MHuLlj,\l AND :.A\ AOER V .\l\Ki A il\l. COMRAST. 'FRIEZE "1' I'llK I'ROPHKTS," PACSEANT OF THE MINISTERING Gli r. RICIIMdM), \ IRCilM A in MISS HELEN THOIU^RN Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts bench of the Muses sits in judgment; talent of many kinds is emancipated — elocu- tionist, artist, dancer, author, actor, each finds a fertile field for his endeavor. The art is visualized, not in marble or on canvas but through the medium of living flesh. The greatest art in the world is the art of living, said Herbert Spencer. Pageantry attempts to "compete with life", expressing in flesh and blood democracy's idealism. Pageantry is organic, personal, subjective — the artist offers himself. The soul of the poet and artist may lie fallow beneath the frock of the butcher or the jerkin of the blacksmith until the pageant brings it forth. A man must keep out of jail and almshouse first. Whenever necessity and the stern struggle for a livelihood relax their grip the lyric side of life, poten- tial in everyone, rises to the surface. "Lyrical" has been defined as implying a form of musical utterance in art governed by overmastering emotion and set free by powerful concordant rhythm. Lyric emotion seems to be a sort of care-free spirit bouncing through the world — instinctive, happy- go-lucky spontaneousness which ignores consequences (and often bills) and bursts the restraining ties of civilization to pour out the primeval joy in the heart. Forgetfulness of self is the Kingdom of Heaven. The lyrical impulse which the pageant engenders, makes more keenly alive those fine, sensitive feelings which round out human character and give birth to such arts as represent the flower of the nation's growth. 45 A Handbook of American Pageantry Beauty should rise to the height of sublimity in the pageant. To the connoisseur, the thrills of pleasure which the Fine Arts give, are due not to the soul vibrations they arouse by a moral lesson conveyed, but to the harmonious relation of color and the ma- terial constituent elements. Form is a particular arrangement of a group of things which imparts to their individuality a new collective significance, and gives to the whole, melody, unity and beauty. Underlying principles of all arts are dominance, sequence, order, empha- sis, contrast, composition, unity. Dr. S. S. Curry likens the pageant to a Chinese tapestry in which the heterogeneous figures point to one central theme. The illuminati — especially workers in color — will be moving directors of the pageant. "It's the color that gets in one's throat", observed Kipling, reviewing the Oxford pageant. Color is the lure which at- tracts the whole town. Humanity gropes toward the light. The Latin word "festum" appears in the German "fest", the Spanish "fiesta", the English "feast". The pageant is a festival in the sense that it is a feast for the eye— a banquet of color. On a dry summer's afternoon when the horizontal rays of the setting sun illumine the powdery atmosphere, the unfolding, serial splendors of a pageant have seemed like an enormous stained-glass window being put together and taken apart before the eyes. Again it may be compared to an irridescent mirage of the Past lying beyond the horizon on the one hand and of the Future on the other hand. 46 ■CHARIOT RACE." IN GREEK PAGEANT. "THE FIRE REGAINED" NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE. WRITTEN BY SIDNEY M.HIRSCH THE BUILDING IS A REPRODUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN PARTHENON. PAGEANT AT MEDVVAY, MASSACHUSETTS. liV MISS ESTHER \V. BATES. NOIK STONE WAI.I., ALSO SCREEN TO E.VCI.U Dl'. PUHIU' XV U.n\\y\\.\\ THI-: ARTISliC AND SERVICEABLE l\ UACKCRDUM) Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts Pageantry is art for the dilettante. It may seem superficial compared with stage play since no laboriously-worked-out plot is required. Anyone with sound horse-sense and capacity for hard work may be a master. A person need not study ten years to acquire the technique nor become impassioned to the point of madness. Pageantry is more derivative than spontaneous. The artist creates, originates; the pageant master arranges, chronicles — copies the magpie who builds her nest from whatever strikes her fancy. The artist keeps the world from turning sour, because he is always holding up fresh ideals of beauty. He supplies that vision without which the people perish; but in pa- geantry the bone and sinev/ of the municipality supply the "punch". The vision and the punch must combine to produce vigorous, constructive art. Before pageantry may be admitted permanently into the charmed circle of the higher arts, it must dispel the charge of being merely a passing fad and prove its vitality as an ai'tistic phenomenon. To justify recognition a fine art must convey a distinct message which no other art can do. After knocking a long while at the door has not photography been recognized as, and conceded the dignity of, an art-form? What is the pe- culiar individuality of the pageant? As a medium of expression the pageant occupies a place among the fine arts somewhat akin to, yet separated from, the drama. As a mat- ter of fact, the English drama was an outgrowth of pageantry. Indissolubly associated 49 A Handbook of American Pageantry with the development of the community, true pageantry is the art of perfecting the hu- man family. Other arts are mostly individual. The world has been accustomed to over- look the lapses from conventional ethics among studio orchids. A dazzling genius of Bohemia may live without family, credit, sobriety, hair-cut or clean collar and yet hold the adulation of the world through the "virtue proper to his profession". Oscar Wilde claimed that the worship of beauty was too splendid to be sane. But that morbid esthete was hardly a pageant model. The business of pageantry is to reveal life as it should be — life and art — not art above all else in the world. To produce normal, sane, vital men and women counts first. Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her "deepest con- victions on Life and Art" makes this confession: Passioned to exalt the artist in me, At the cost of putting down the woman, I forgot No perfect artist is developed here, from any imperfect woman. The first noticeable difference between theatrical play and the pageant is, that in the latter there is no curtain. In the play-house curiosity and expectation are alert to know what is going on behind the barrier. At the sound of a bell the eye eagerly follows the rising curtain to catch glimpses of the ankles, knees, bodies, and finally heads of the players — the audience is greeted with a burst of song, or ushered into the midst of 50 THE COLONNADE AND STATUE IN NEW YORK CARRY A SUGGESTION OF THE ROMAN PROCESSIONAL PAGEAN P. ^^Hl ^^^^H^^l H^^^l Eri ^^^^^^I^P VF^ / " J^K^^^V^^^^^^^^H K/^ ^^^B' ' 1' ^^^^^^Hi. ^■i^^H ^ft V vV'^^^^^^H ^^^^^^B , > '^^M ■fl ■MARCH I'AST" IN TIIK I'AGKANT OF ILLINOIS in THOMAS W. STEVENS. A GOOD ILLUSTRATION OF THE SPECTACULAR EFFECT OF NIGHT PAGEANTS. "RAISINC; THK MKST MI-I TNO HOI Si; " A FLOAT IN THK SI RKI-.T PAGKANT C;l\ li.N AT NKIHT. CADI 1,I-AC, MIt HK;AN. Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts kitchen banter between the butler and maid servant. The real pageant does not break up- on one so rudely. It dawns as stealthily as approaching day. During the strains of the overture a single figure, or chorus, or group of dancers, is discovered gradually approaching from some far-away entrance, allowing the imagination time to play about the figures with the lambent glow of heat-lightning upon the distant landscape on a summer's evening. One of the essential differences between the drama and the pageant is, that the former carries its lesson by presenting the career of a single individual against which the spectator measures the vicissitudes of his own existence. In this way, perhaps, a finer artistry and unity of theme may be possible, and the rewards of virtue and wages of sin more intimately shown. The play has plot— development, continuity, denouement. There is an artistic finish in a three-act play disclosing the temptation of a man or woman, the downfall and final banishment from society, or the sorrows of two lovers who, at the final curtain, live happy ever after. The theatre deals almost universally with personal problems involving the duel of the sexes. Wendell Phillips said: There are but two plots —love and hate. The pageant on the other hand takes up the larger virtues and heroic affairs of the corporate community, "a body without death and mind without decline", and the individual is no longer a unit to measure against the hero of the play, but a mere fraction of the solid race, experiencing the common lot of man. 55 A Handbook of American Pageantry Pageantry supplies an important lesson in humility: That nature, while she encourages reasonable individuality, is careless of the individual in her desire to forward the whole race. While the drama is an indoor product having unity of time, place and action, the best pageant is given in God's Great Out-of-doors and makes a place or an idea the hero — not an individual. There is no bright particular star for whom the other players are but a supporting company. Many dramatists have taken a small section of folk-life for a theme but it takes the pageant to transmit a catholic, inclusive vision of humanity and preach the gospel of life with stateliness, sweep, and grandeur. It is a life-size, full length portrait of a geographical hero executed with bold, broad treatment. ' A pageant is more loosely articulated than a play — simpler, more ruggedly elemental, presenting more primal impulses. It lays stronger emphasis on color, mass and motion; less on light and dialogue. A theatre has formal wings, proscenium, tormentors — a pageant arena is limited only by the horizon. There are no flies on a pageant. This may handi- cap its capacity to produce a sudden artificial shower or snow storm. Showers are real in pageants — usually too real. Modem theatre-goers speak of light as the chief person- age in the play. By means of the Fortuny dome and stereopticon, light transforms a stage scene into poetic and entrancing beauty. But these are out of place in pageantry as much as wind-machines, thunder-making devices or discordant drummer's traps. 56 o 6! O z Id a o H < O o a: X i ^ k K: RrVtff y}: Ti\'^^ H » ■*^ : z z < o SCKNE AT PAGEANT IN DRlll) MILL PARK- H Al, 11 \U)RK. RKFI.KC 'IIONS IN IM.ACID U AIER DDL DLIi THE ROMANTIC til ARM OF AN ATIRACTU E EPISODE Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts Old Probabilities is the director of lighting. His moods are delightfully uncertain. No one else knows whether a scene will be acted under an idyllic calm, brooding tempest, blistering sun, Titianesque sunset, or a "painter's sky" of dull, low-hanging clouds. The master of stagecraft at the Little Theatre determines the cubature of stage area for pro- portion, composition, rapport; the pageant master must work by rule of thumb and in- tuitive judgment. But he may introduce features that are impossible in the circumscribed playhouse, such as a shepherd leading a flock of sheep over the hillside or a troop of gaily caparisoned horses dashing up through a long vista. Earth, air, fire, water are available to produce "atmosphere". Whenever possible approaching boats captivate an audience. Other expressive elemental things, like blazing altar fires ascending in spiral columns; diaphanous mists created by pouring water upon heated stones; shooting arrows from bows into the woods or across the water; or releasing a flock of captive doves, have their place. One of the very beautiful scenes in the Darien pageant was when, at the close, the entire company filed past a bonfire in the open field and each person tossed a fagot up- on the blazing common hearth. At Tampa, Florida, a chess game played with living queens, bishops, pawns, was a strikingly happy entr'acte. Pageantry turns thought back to the picturesque side of life which has been grievously marred by most of our modern mechanical devices. Efficiency is usually gained 59 A Handbook of American Pageantry at the loss of charm. The cultural side of life is emphasized in pageantry in order that idealism may not be ground under the iron heel of materialism. Lowell once said he hoped Harvard College would never teach anything useful. So long as man made things by hand he found joy in his work. The machine crushes out much of the happiness of labor. A happy person is in the best mood to create. The joy of imagination is recognized by Christian Scientist and by the child making castles in the sand. Expression, based up- on thinking, imagination, feeling, will, is to the artist the supreme satisfaction of life. By giving a local habitation to his dreams he lives. But a pageant is not given wholly for art's sake. Always the serious lesson of the great legion who have passed on before, ap- peals to the living to press courageously forward toward their imfulfilled ideals and broaden the flowing stream of life. There is an ethical as well as esthetical side. The same Emerson, who said: Beauty is its own excuse for being, also wrote: I slept and dreamed the world was beauty; I woke and lo, I found 'twas duty. Rhythm has been called the father of all arts. Poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, are thus allied by a common basis of unity. Rhythm of body is the earliest of the arts. A fundamental requisite in pageantry is that each individual shall be a decorative feature in the landscape which is seldom the case in the stress and strain of struggling, every day existence. A pageant is a transfiguration in which the sordid, common 60 fefe-*?4;;ttf ^H "iJ^a^BM ll^ ■jiSEB ^iLiii^ W^l^gMm^^^^ SUFFRAGE PAGEANT, WASHINGTON. TOY BALLOONS IN THE HANDS OF DANCERS GIVE A LIGHT AND AIRY EFFECT. A CHILDREN'S PAGEANT ON CHICAGO PLAYGROUND DIRECTED BY MISS CORA MEL P.VTTEN. COIRT OI KING GEORGE AND QUEEN CHARLOTTE. A SCREEN BACKGROUND TO SUGGEST INDOORS WAS FOUND BE LESS PLEASING THAN THE NATURAL LAKE BACKGROUND. ro Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts grunt and sweat of actual events are swept away, leaving the soul of the occasion set free into poetic beauty somewhat as the post-impressionist painter scorns the mere itemization of details and portrays only the inner spirit of his subject. The pageant fills the mind with beautiful tableaux — pictures that will not fade in a lifetime on a sensitized eye. To an appreciative artist the world is a continuous gallery of gratifying pictures, which exhilarate those who have eyes to see and hearts to respond. He sees everywhere the spirit of beauty seeking admission to this world of the senses. These beautiful impressions through the windows of the soul, create his character and de- termine the degree of his enjoyment of life. The fine arts are the language of the super- man. A few unfortunates have neither an eye for beauty nor an ear for music. To the elect, the sense of the beautiful feeds and gives strength through repose, because in esthetic enjoyment, the "human equation" is eliminated and a person is raised to a plane of ab- stract contemplation (ask militant suffragettes). A well-regulated pageant should consist of three parts, realism, symbolism, ideal- ism. Much attention has lately been given to pantomime and Delsartian callisthenics, which are the special property of the pageant. Pantomime brings into play symbolism, which seems to satisfy a longing for something yet imattained ; and implies an ulterior meaning in an object — as when the laurel tokens victory, or a slip of paper autographed 63 A Handbook of American Pageantry by Uncle Sam stands for one hundred dollars in gold. At Nashville, Tennesee, a figure representing Hope kindling the flame of Truth upon the altar of Time was a good pageant in- stance. Large ideas are thus crystallized in tabloid form. Visible symbols of invisible re- alities are a revolt against the hard, cruel, staring actualities of existence. The world is full of imaginative people who dislike to call a spade a spade. The ideal play-world of art aspires above the exacting, imperative world of fact. The tendency of advancing minds to substitute a symbol for a conception, to translate ideas into images, and reduce every nebulous fancy to a precise and visible form calls into play the finest artistic invention. We have seen preventive medicine symbolized, the ocean, mountains, insects, New Eng- land Conscience, witchcraft, even crime, symbolized. One of the finest types of sym- bolic pageant, called the "Perfect City," was given (1910) under the auspices of the Forward Civic Movement at Boston. Knights of Economy repulsed the besetting ills of civic life — disease, dirt, crime, insanity, fire and flood. An exquisite conception of symbolism at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, represented the vision of St. John by a cavalcade of Knights of St. John winding up the hill-side from the valley and dis- appearing through the woodland. There seems to be no limit to the possibilities of interpreting every phase of thought through the symbolic dance. In Greek days a mask was worn by the players which everybody understood. But when symbolism is em- 64 ■■KITCHEN SPIRITS" IN PAGEANT OF HOME-MAKING AT ELIOT. MAINE. BY MRS. SIDNEY LANIER. JR MUNITY PAGEANT IS PREMISED ON THE PRESERVATION OF THE HOME. THE COM- tv-l^ '■SIGNING IlIK DKCLARXIION OK I N DKl'KN DKNCK,' AT LM \KRSirV OF AND COLONIAL A RC II ITKCTl RK LKNIi THEMSELVES AnMIRAHl \IR(;IMA. THE ATTRACIIVE CAMPUS .\ TO I'AliKANT ITRI'OSES. Pageantry as One of the Fine Arts bodied in pantomime and action by amateur actors, care must be taken not to draw it so finely that even the most acute minds are unable to comprehend it. Pageantry makes for grace of body, ease of manner, literary appreciation, clear dic- tion, richer emotions, style in raiment, and adds to the general store of culture and happi- ness of mind. Acting a part allows the performer to vent his surplus emotional energy in the carrying out of a character which by its imaginative sweep stimulates him to become temporarily the assumed personality. Everyone enjoys being a hero, if only vicariously. No matter how clumsy or half-baked the pageant artistry may be, it slakes, in some measure, the gnawing hunger for artistic nourishment. One enthusiast recommends that a master of pageants be appointed for public services in every city, to direct all holiday celebrations. For only half a century has the public library been a permanent institution in the city, but who today would think of planning a municipality without one. Lately, we have seen the necessity of establishing public playgrounds in every city. The next movement should be to set apart a nature-theatre where pageants and outdoor plays may be presented by the public during seasonable weather. Steps have al- ready been taken for the establishment of such theatres at Spuyten-Duvil-on-the- Hudson, at Bankside, North Dakota, and at Carmel, California. A hillside partly 67 A Handbook of American Pageantry covered with a roof will provide an auditorium where the audience may enjoy the efforts of mankind and at the same time take delight in the bumblebees humming over the clover fields, the smell of the peaty turf and the call of the woodland birds. Especially would our more recent immigrants from continental Eiirope who have inherited dramatic and artistic instincts be benefited by such an institution. It takes years to acquire high appreciation of art, but the person who does, possesses entree to the choicest, most refresh- ing pleasure the civilized world can offer. And what is appreciated is appropriated. By establishing this nature-theatre there will be no danger that the pageant will be a pass- ing fad — it will rest secure among the permanent arts. 68 THE AUDIENCE SURROUNDED THE PAGEANT AT ERASMUS HALL, BROOKLYN TVPICAI. PANOR \MIC \ IKW OF GROUP OF PAGKANTEF.RS IN COSTIME I HK l'Ai;i:ANr of I'ONtK DF. I.KON AT ST. AlCLSriNF. FLORIDA. WAS PRF.SKNTKI3 ON THE PARADF l.kdlND l\ THF. SHADOW OF FORT MARION. SEATED IN FRONT OF THE BLEACHERS AT ROCK HII.E, SOITH C\ROI,l\A THE AESTHETIC VALUE OF THE HORSE OVER THE AUTOMOBILE IS WELL DEMONSTRATED HERE AN EQUINE EPISODE IN A PAGEANT IS SURE TO BE APPRECIATED. sw^ i^wwmrmmm^ SVMHOI.It\l,"I'A(;i-:AN [• OF lliK VKAR'AI' lilcll SCHOOL. HROOKl.INK. MASASCIIUSETTS. CHAPTER III. Pageantry as an Educational Factor. Truth, beauty, knowledge are three sisters Who never can be sundered without tears. Tennyson. OMENIUS, father of modern education, writing in Orbis Sensual- ium Pictus, the first child's picture book, recognized that teaching could make a stronger appeal to the mind through the eye than through the ear^that images make ideas more definite and con- crete than words. This picturebook plan, originating with the Moravian bishop in the 17th century has been elaborated and perfected with the passing of time. Knowledge cannot be spread by word of mouth and books alone; the art of com- munication assumes many forms. For conveying historic information the degree of impres- sion might be stated in this order: First, the printed word; second, the printed picture; third, the moving picture; fourth, the living picture. We measure history by the human unit — man — and to objectify history through living persons gives the vital touch that makes our predecessors in the procession of life stand and glow before our eyes. History pictorially presented takes a firmer grip on the minds of indifferent students. They may live 73 A Handbook of American Pageantry over again more easily the experiences of those people who loved and laughed, struggled and wept in years gone by. A person who never attended school can appreciate the pageant. Edison, fovmder of the popular "fiive-cent university," declares that some day he will do away with all text books and teach everything by electricity. But the pageant may forestall him. The educative value of art as a vehicle of power is everywhere recognized by public school teachers, who perceive that the pageant contains germs of promise not fully developed. There is scarcely a normal school in the country which has not, in some form or other, attempted what we have styled "the academic pageant." Anne A. T. Craig has written a volume to prove that the joy of a productive activity is the strongest motive force in true education. The pageant is a hundred-headed teacher who educates by wholesale. It is a living museum of fine things, converting the pasture into a schoolroom, — a popular society for stimulating the historic sense which has been backward in America. For two centu- ries American youth were trained to emulate heroes from Rome, Greece and early Eng- land. Now that the rise of America is considered history of first magnitude the pageant may teach something more than soulless, Gradgrind facts and dull genealogical data. The continuity of advancing civilization is picturesquely brought to mind. Boiling down three centuries into three hours makes a rich quintessence of social and political progress. 74 PROCESSIONAL FROM THE MAGNIFICENT "PAGEANT OF APOI.LO" IN OPEN AIR THEATRE AT BERKELEY. CALIFORNIA UNDER DIRECTION OF MRS, H. S. MUZZEV "COIRT (II' C KORCK HI." SUA 1)1'; OF PAGKANT AT lAUN TON, MASSACHUSETTS. THF. ENTIRK AUDIENCE WAS SEATED I\ IIIE I'lNE TREES BORDERING. ON THREE SIDES. THE OPEN LEVEL ARENA. Pageantry as an Educational Factor A pageant is a municipal invigorant. The community takes account of itself, sums up its assets and liabilities, pulls itself up by the roots to see if it is grow- ing. "Know thyself" is as important for a municipality as for an individual. As a commonwealth comprehends itself more fully, it more firmly grasps its powers and facul- ties; can better build ideals. Thomas W. Stevens, happily compares the pageant to a long road drawing itself up to the summit of a hill from which it may review its trailing course below. No pageant can be purely parochial — always there is the universal in the local — each event is charged with meaning that touches world forces. As a school of educa- tion it must be careful to portray rugged, long-lived things of the land which the average citizen can understand. Otherwise it becomes caviare to the general. Cubist vagaries, futurist frills, post-impressionist anarchy, the morbid analyses which are the present furore of special students, in various arts, may be used only as a light garnish to a robust car- cass of community history. Art which is suitable for human nature's daily food should be offered the spectator. Healthy art is created by healthy people. This art must be sane and simple enough for any child to understand and assimilate; not taxing too severely the imagination of the village blacksmith, the tired business man, or the fagged out shop girl. Among the factors educating the American public in the 17th century were the clergy and courts and town meeting orators; in the 18th century to these were added 77 A Handbook of American Pageantry the schoolhouse and newspaper; in the 19th century came the drama and the motion picture and through these means we have a much more uniform degree of common knowl- edge. The 20th century contributes the pageant — the best teacher of by-gone man- ners and customs yet devised. Attics are ransacked; trunks emptied; forgotton relics brought out of limbo ; utensils of former days re-appear, (so often ludricrously crude in this day of rapid invention). But an even greater service is the stimulus of the imag- ination. A pageant which does not set you thinking, is no pageant at all. Dr. Stanley Hall observes that the study of history teaches that the best things have not yet hap- pened — that mankind has ever fallen short of its" ideals. The promises of life always out- run performance. But inspiration must take root in the past, to produce finer blossoms for the future. The greatest educational and cultural benefit of the pageant is for those who take part in the production. Things we do for ourselves mean more than things done for us. "The song is to the singer and comes back most to him." A pageant of two hours and one-half can impart, especially to the citizens of the newer nations with which America has blood connections, the ideals of democracy and the stepping stones of history, better than the combined efforts of school teachers can do in years by customary text-book methods. The whole municipality goes to school to- gether. The academic pageant teaches more than facts of history; it brings esprit de 78 - ARAB SCHOLARS AWAITING THE MUEZZIN CALL TO I'RA'iER. PAGEANT OF EDUCATION. BOSTON NORMAL SCHOOL RV MRS. C. E. DALLIN. z < o ■A a Pageantry as an Educational Factor corps into the school and holds many an unwilling scholar who might otherwise have wandered into mischief, or premature factory work. It satisfies the social instincts, in- creases friendships between the teacher and pupil and interests an outside audience in the school by an appeal to the lyrical imaginative side. The usual graduation exercises of our public schools have lost, in a measure, their meaning and attractiveness through similarity and repetition. They have become stereotyped and barren. How much more refreshing to both audience and graduates to have the occasion of leaving school punct- uated by a community drama, presenting the spirit of the municipality in which the students have grown up. This would serve to strengthen the young person's ties to the home town by participation in a memorable occasion. So strong is the dramatic in- stinct in school children to appear as some distinguished character that teachers find it easy to utilize this impulse by assigning principal parts in a spring pageant as a reward of merit in studies or deportment. A boy will behave fairly well in order to exercise a little authority over his associates by appearing as Abraham Lincoln or George Wash- ington. Possibly this exhibitional feature is a drawback in school pageantry. At Point Loma, the Theosophist Colony maintains a theatre in which musical artists perform con- cealed behind a solid bank of flowers to kill out the desire of personal sensation. The school pageant affords fine opportunity for the young fry to "show off" individually, 81 A Handbook of American Pageantry at the expense of team work. On the other hand, there seems to be a gain from the fact that the admired virtues of the distinguished character are impressed upon the youthful impersonator and the influence is likely to cling for a while. Oftentimes a boy will be known among his schoolmates by his assumed name for years afterwards. The desire to act a part is early apparent — we see it in boys whooping through the woods with tomahawks in hand and feathers in their caps; in girls traipsing up the street in their mother's dresses to visit and surprise their neighbors; in children's mock heroics behind the bam or in the garret, repeating classic speeches from the school reader. Make-believe is a universal impulse of young people. World-heroes are not wholly lack- ing in this trait. Nero knew the value of dramatic tricks; Napoleon always set the stage before a battle; Columbus tucked away in his trunk a suit of scarlet that he might observe his landing on the shores of India with spectacular effect; Washington had an eye for stately entrances and exits. Ten per cent, of the people of the United States earn a living directly or indirectly by entertaining the other ninety per cent. Within a dozen years ten thousand motion pic- ture theatres have sprung up in America. The night school with the camera is educating as many as the day school with the pedagogues. When we come to compare the motion picture with the pageant picture the difference is in favor of the latter, as much as substance 82 ^A J^ «^^-^ ' ^\mL ^H^t^p/^ 3i ^ ■ " . ' P^^^ir* NO PAGEANT IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A CHARMING COLONIAL WEDDING CEREMONY. MATERNAL LOVE AND PATRIOTISM. AT LAWRENCE. MASSA- CHUSETTS. DIRECTED BV MISS ALICE MicDONAI.D. CIIAI NCKY OI.COIT AS LORD BURGOYNE SURRENDKRI Nti TO Gi;\i;K \1. (i \1 I S IN I'ACKANT OK SARATOGA. GnSIIF.n ACTORS AIM'RECIATK THE OI'l'ORl I Mil l:S OK I'AGEAN TRV. UISTIN- Pageantry as an Educational Factor !s superior to shadow. The human touch can never be supplanted by machine-made films. Commenting on the Patterson strike pageant the New York Tribune said, complimenting the authors: Lesser geniuses might have hired a hall and exhibited moving pictures of the Patterson strike. Saturday night's pageant transported the strike itself into New York. In the school room the maximum of efficiency depends largely upon the number of students in the class. There is a focus of time and numbers as well as of space. The ques- tion of size has a bearing upon the best results of the pageant. Magnificent as were the stupendous spectacles of Quebec and Philadelphia, these manifestly can be given only in the largest American cities. To accomplish its mission completely, the pageant must be possible for any community. Indeed, the small town seems to be the most promising soil for its growth. The standard for a comfortable, home-made, well-bred, refined and satisfying pageant seems to be: A cast of about two hundred, an audience of about two thousand and duration of about two hours. The phlegmatic English- man or reflective German may sit through a dramatic production continuing three or four hours, but the nervous and feverish American temperament begins to get uneasy af- ter two hours stationed in one spot. Almost any community can muster two hundred participants for a holiday festival, and with judicious advertising attract an audience €f two thousand. When an audience reaches five thousand it becomes sprawling, top- 85 A Handbook of American Pageantry heavy, noisy; speeches cannot be heard; the essential intimacy between actor and audience is lost. At some of the Greek and Roman theatres where portions of the audience were three hundred feet from the stage and two hundred above, actors were obliged to wear heroic masques as facial expression could not be understood. At the Quebec pageant it was a trying strain upon the ears to hear the speakers talking against the wind. As education aims to call forth and harmonize all the powers of the individual, so the pageant must aim to enlist and permeate the whole life of the community. The pa- geant is not designed to store the head with loads of "learned lumber", but to stimulate and enrich the mind through agreeable sensations; not to shatter cherished traditions but to maintain the best ideals of the Past and carry them on to the future purified and en- nobled. As an educational factor, the pageant should review, in living form, the manifold life processes and become a center from which fine influences radiate. The advanced and liberal American school system encourages the pageant of the race by rejecting, as unfit to guide the youth of the land, the woman who elects to exercise her normal right to motherhood. But educators in community ideals by means of pageantry are subject to no constricting regulations of School Committees, Boards of Education or other unnat^ ural City Fathers. 86 CHAPTER IV. The Pageant as a Nursery of Patriotism,. The right patriotism consists in the delight which springs from contributing our peculiar and fegitimate advantages to the benefit of humanity. Emerson. HE new is wearing off the New World. America is growing old. Uncle Sam begins to feel his age. Bi-centennial, quarter-millennial, even tercentennial anniversaries are being observed in many commu- nities throughout the land. For a municipal birthday party the pag- eant appears as the festival de luxe. Indeed there seems to be a Meteoric shower of pageants, so many recognize its power to fan the flame of patriotism. Dr. Johnson once defined patriotism as the last resort of the scoundrel. A recent writer con- tends that, in the eyes of the Martians, the two greatest obstacles to progress on the earth are patriotism and religion. As mankind grows older patriotism extends its bound- aries beyond national lines and becomes a universal world force. But to manifest a love of home and a desire to serve one's country is the time-honored definition of the word. These feelings, even if restricted devotion, should yet be cherished by suitable observ- ances of national holidays. Philip Nolan has not became a hero. s 1 87 A Handbook of American Pageantry The pageant is pre-eminently fitted for welcoming home a hero, opening a fair, celebrating a victory, inaugurating a great undertaking, or observing an anniversary. Fourth of July is an especially appropriate season. The pageant is safe and sane — a re- served, wholesome, generous form of patriotic display, dignified and artistic — not reckless and unguarded chauvinism. It vibrates to the iron chord of freedom and offers ample outlet for Young America to let the eagle scream without inviting the calamities at- tendant upon the old-fashioned cannon-cracker and sky-rocket celebrations. Arthur Farwell recommends that holiday noise be converted into music. Since many cities in America have passed ordinances prohibiting the sale of dangerous explosives, a substi- tute must be provided to preserve the living spirit of Civic Liberty. There must be some escape valve for the ebullient enthusiasm which "the day we celebrate" arouses. But the lid never flies off in pageantry. It is not a sporting event. In fact, it is rather reactionary, serving as a gentle hint that American youth are speeding up to the limit in their entertainments. A public-spu-ited citizen or Lady Bountiful can scarcely make a nobler present to the town than to become sponsor for a pageant of patriotism on Fourth of July. The holiday then takes on a beautiful form, and becomes a great civic rite, through which the non-English speaking immigrants to the Land of Promise may be taught their parts as "flag-makers of the nation". To "Americanize" should be— to teach the meaning of liberty, equality, 88 'HOME FROM THE WAR,' PAGEANT OF WARWICK. MASSACHUSETTS. BY MISS ANNE B. C. FISHER. A CIVIL WAR SCENE OFTEN CONTRIBUTES AN APPROPRIATE NO IE OF PATHOS. THK PAGKANT AT HRAITI.l-.HORO. VKRMONT. WAS CIVEN ACAINST A A DKTAII, OF Till-. C.R WD \k\I\' AROISKS SHAGCY MOIMAIN P\TRIOIlSM AS HACki;R()l Nl). The Pageant as a Nursery of Patriotism fraternity — the word should not stand, as it frequently seems to, for the reverence of hard cash, the cultivation of a taste for crude pleasures, the loss of refinement, love, gentleness, and respect for parents which are the birthmark of many European immigrants. Patriotism is a plant of slow growth. In America while the Colonies were de- pendent on Great Britain, they were, for the most part, loyal to the mother country, and their display of patriotism took the form of celebrating the King's birthday, burning the effigy of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November, or holding a mammoth barbecue when- ever they had gained a victory over the French. After the Declaration of Independence and successful outcome of the Revolutionary War, exultation at throwing off the British yoke was worked out of the system in boisterous enthusiasm which in later years might have been known as "jingoism". The Cornwallis festival which came in the corn-roast- ing month of October, intended to keep alive the memory of the surrender of the British commander, was the occasion of much spread-eagle oratory against England. The elation of the youthful nation was heightened by the naval victory over Great Britain which gave equal rights upon the seas, and by the victories of the Mexican War which brought about the logical territorial expansion of the country. But it was not until after the consolidation of the original Union of States which had been threatened with disruption by the slavery question that America acquired a national consciousness. 91 A Handbook of American Pageantry The centennial exposition, which foreshadowed many of the elements of our modern pageant, proved to the world that the United States had come to take a place as a leading power among the foremost nations. To one who has followed up the hundreds of pageants given within the last five years the spirit of America is vividly portrayed in this way. Spots of color in our history — such as Frontenac at Quebec, Blennerhasset and his dream of empire, the Owenites in Indiana, Endicott cutting the cross from the English flag, voyageurs leaving Ripon for the West, the "Angel of the Battlefield" at Ox- ford, Daniel Boone at Louisville, Kentucky, Franklin at the Court of France, Fra Juni- pero at Los Angeles — these come to have a fresh and livelier meaning. A nation is known by its heroes. Patriotic spell-binders shout: A nation which cares not for its past, has no present and deserves no future. Anyhow we are obliged to shoulder the heritage of former generations, whether we will or no. All that we do is the culmination of a long series of events that have gone before. Our deeds still travel with us from afar And what we have been, makes us what we are. Therefore it cannot be amiss to learn something of the heroes who have guided and shaped the destinies of the race, and profit by their lessons. Regard for noble achievements is a conservative safeguard against revolution. But patriotic citizens 92 The Pageant as a Nursery of Patriotism should never permit a pageant to commercialize, cold-bloodedly, the profound experiences and tragic events of the fathers. That is like selling the birthright. The historian, George Sheldon, now in his 95th year, claims prenatal reminiscence of at least two hundred years. When he went to the Deerfield pageant he could see himself grappling in the hand-to-hand struggles of the 17th century with sin and Redskins, the devil and the Dutch; then in the 18th century he saw himself hurrying with the minute men to Bunker Hill; in 1840, he joined in the festive dance to celebrate the Cheapside victory. There is an inherited consciousness if our minds were refined enough to realize it, or we could keep quiet long enough to hear it. Stevenson, you remember, called this subliminal personality the "homunculus". He says in the "Manse": Our conscious years are but a moment in the history of the elements that build us. Hawthorne wished that he might live ten years at a time in each of the seven American genera- tions preceeding him. Uncle Sam would say: "When I was at Yorktown"; "When I was with Jackson at New Orleans"; "When I was with Scott at Chapultepec". Why should not his plain American nieces and nephews also assert their longevity and palingenesis for pageant purposes? In Shakespeare's day female characters were impersonated by downy-cheeked boys. Woman's theatrical rights have advanced in three centuries. Dramatis personae are today 93 A Handbook of American Pageantry mostly feminine. Pageantry in America is dominated by a handful of men and several him- dred women. It is a demonstration of the fermenting feminist movement. To inquu-e what are the patriotic ideals of the emancipated woman may border upon the humorous. Does the larger opportunity imply a lesser obligation to home and family? Those inspiring, well-rounded heroines whom the pageant revives — Priscilla Mullins, Betsy Ross, Martha Washington, Dolly Madison — inevitably raise the question : Should the pageant, as an expression of community ideals, exalt that phase of feminism which turns the back upon the domestic virtues in the feverish reach for sensational publicity (and marks the decline of nationality), or should the pageant throw the weight of its influence to uphold the sweetness, charm and sanctity of the home, on which America was founded and has been preserved! Any city in the United States may give a patriotic pageant if a level area, at least 200 feet square can be found adjoining an expanse of lake or ample river. Take some of the most prominent events of American history, such as the Landing of Co- lumbus, the Arrival of the Pilgrims, Signing of the Declaration; introduce one or two local scenes bearing upon national affairs; find some Indian legend connected with the locality (Indians must surely be counted in — the American penny without the sachem's head would not seem stranger than an American pageant without its band of 94 PRESIDENT LINCOLN ADMITTING NEVADA INTO THE UNION IN PROCESSIONAL PAGEANT AT RENO. FRKNCH VOYAGKl'RS AT I'AGK \NT OF WINONA. MINNESOTA. F..\AMI'I.I-: OF FRONTIERSMAN COSTUME. The Pageant as a Nursery of Patriotism Indians); call out a detail from the Grand Army; enlist representatives of various nationalities which colonize in every city for a suite of folk dances; give a sumptuous court scene in one of the countries from which America was colonized, introducing Ferdinand and Isabella, Henry the Fourth of France, or Queen Elizabeth; as a finale, let Uncle Sam review the pageant and the Goddess of Liberty lead in singing "America". A simple, coherent, magnificent entertainment is at once outlined. A good treatise upon Fourth of July pageantry by William C. Langdon has been issued by the Russell Sage Foundation. "Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People" by Constance D'Arcy MacKay is another valuable work. Patriotism is expressed in many good deeds dying tongueless every day. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. But the loudest cheers are given the gold-laced, battle-scarred hero. How to square with the humanitarian, educational and peaceful ideals of the pageant a reproduction of war scenes — how to arouse patriotic emo- tions without inciting to bloodshed or violence— is a vexatious problem. This opens up to the pageant promoter the old question: Is war a nursery of vigor, loyalty, conscience and the finer virtues — or does war exploit the bestial side of man and deplete the life blood of the nation? On one side are pale advocates of the disarmament of nations who are horrified to read, in the gentle Ruskin, that the Muse of history has coupled together 97 \ A Handbook of American Pageantry peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace and death ; on the other, are bristling Bernhardis who would hate to see this earth a "vast hutch of gentle, harmless, tender-hearted, highly-intellectual rabbits". Does a thrilling, vivid battle scene cater to the primitive side of human nature? Can the grand ideals, for which battles have been fought, be so effectively impressed in any other way? Can any cause live long that is not worth fighting for? History, which purports to explain man's progress from darkness to light, is chiefly a record of the wrongs which man has done — his greed, oppression, conquests, false am- bitions, diseases. We read history to avoid the mistakes of our predecessors. To un- tangle the snarl of prejudices, shams, personal antagonisms, family jealousies, social discord, especially rampant in old towns where people have grown to know each other's failings too well; to bring about an entente cordiale between persons, cities, and nations; remove false barriers of civilization; rid the heart of contempt and race antagonism; reconcile old friends and introduce new ones, should be by-products of the pageant, which may allay the legacy of hate, at the same time knitting a web of patriotism. 98 CHAPTER V. Pageantry from the Sociologist's Standpoint. Unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, the pageant of a day, So perish all whose breast ne'er learned to glow, For others good or melt at other's woe. Pope. PAGEANT socializes a community and raises the efficiency of the race by organizing public leisure for public benefit. With shorter hours of labor comes greater opportunity for the artistic and enjoy- able side of life. "Liberty is leisure", observed Demosthenes. A man's quality is shown in the way be spends his holidays. Too many make them "alcohoUdays". Natura non mutatur. Satan finds mischief still for idle hands to do — hence, the importance of sane, wholesome use of increasing leisure. An effort to lighten the lot of the working man must be attended with an effort to find occu- pation for the energies of the loafing man. The pageant utilizes leisure social energy to leaven the town. That is its chief merit in the minds of many earnest workers impelled by high desire — descendants of those Puritans who could see no holiness in beauty. Pageantry as a human festival has an obivious bearing upon democratic government. 99 A Handbook of American Pageantry There is no caste in art. A pageant is an entertainment, to which all contribute— farmer and historian, poet and dancing girl, musician and school marm. Humanity is touched at many points. Rich and poor, high and low join hands in a common purpose at a mammoth garden-party. Even the family horse, the oxen, and house-dog join in, reminding one of the octogenarian donkey, which, having outlived his usefulness, walked up and down the acropolis beside the workers, in order to share in the public enthusiasm of restoring the Parthenon. The spirit of the occasion is lost if everyone does not have some interest, — either in preparation or participation, or at least by family connection with those preparing and participating. Mixing with one's fellows makes for mutual benefit. Something more is needed for a complete grasp of life than to know only a circle of one's equals. To uplift the lower classes is possibly less important than to call down the snob- bish, superior (so-called) classes of select society who draw their sku*ts away from the "vuglar herd" from whom they spnmg. The tendency of America is toward aristoc- racy; a few are bom aristocrats with democratic leanings, but many more are bom democrats with aristocratic leanings. People's friendships will always be directed by their common tastes. But against sentiments of shallow clannishness it is missionary ser- vice to emphasize the rugged solidarity of the race. The salutary influence of pag- eants comes in giving a cohesiveness to community life which grows more complicated 100 .^ -■ 'y ■ , • ''i-^ . i -;.?y'^ 1 i 1 '■ B^P^n^M^H 9E'''f *»r-^s Jk 1 '1S|| |. 1- ' |l K^ tin^A^d c 2 H X si z < nil', I'\i;k.\nt at osiikosii, Wisconsin, in miss m.oida j i'ii: tI'.us. w as tkka tki) w nil c ii \KMi\(i siMi'i.Kin' Pageantry from the Sociologist's Standpoint every day. To fuse the racial elements into an ethnic ensemble, pageantry must pull toward the centre against forces constantly tending to pull apart. Nothing is better cal- culated to cement the sympathies of a people and to accentuate their homogeneity than the cultivation of folk festivals which compel them to pause and reflect upon the sacrifices by which true ideals of liberty have been promulgated and realize something of the strug- gles and trials of those who have fought for the faith. Pageantry is medicine for mind, body and soul — a community tonic that will effectively revive a village which may appear to be walking in its sleep. Old fogies, hunkers, slow pokes, antediluvian moss-backs will be quickened with ambition to catch up with the world which is running away from them. In times of war or periods of great danger, the community unites itself in a common front through necessity, and drives out poisons in the body politic; but there is need, in times of peace, to strengthen the gregarious instinct by a common cleansing purpose. The word "commonwealth" means common welfare; to promote the good of each for the benefit of all; to preserve the human touch by living in a spirit of neighborliness; to seek beauty in order that all may share it. The commonwealth has performed only half its functions in the protection of life and property. There must be provision for rational relaxations to divert the multitude from sensual temptations and promote a relish for exercises and 103 ' A Handbook of American Pageantry- pastimes that make for health of body and content of mind. In America, the national game of baseball supplies this need for men and boys. The pageant is for women. Police have interfered but once in pageantry, when some dancing girls were gently, but firmly, reminded that their draperies were a trifle scarce, even for a Chicago audience. Pageantry touches the sensitive race question. For years benevolent sociologists in the South have wrestled in vain with the problem of harmonizing the black and white races. Pageant masters have not realized the Utopian dream. In the West, however, the Indian has frequently been introduced into the pageant — perhaps because the "noble Red- man", as the original American, displays a touch of scorn toward the paleface conqueror, whereas the black man bends the knee. The white race holds a different attitude of mind toward the red man from that toward the black. Southerners have taken colored children into their pageants in some cases, and have ridden in coaches driven by colored Jehus. That is about the extent of their collaboration. Hampton students are traveling about the country with a pageant — the Negro's Gift to the Nation. At a New England pageant when the choice came between introducing a colored boy or a white girl wear- ing a black mask it was voted to use the black mask. Racial, cultural, economic antipa- thies implanted in mankind die hard. The ghetto still exists. Each nationality takes a different point of view. The ancestors of the despised black man living in Africa made 104 Pageantry from the Sociologist's Standpoint succulent pot-pie of the white man, considering him good for nothing better. Scorn of race is often carried down to the point where one merely conceals politely his contempt for his neighbor. The discipline of life's experiences has not taught the unthinking the harm of perpetuating such epithets as Sheeny, Paddy, Dago, Nigger, Mucker. A Boston woman needlessly displayed her inferiority by refusing to occupy her seat at a pageant which happened to be next to a gentleman of color and created a scene until she was given a place four seats removed from the offending party. There should be a code of pageant etiquette. Camp-followers who prey upon any large gathering will be in evidence with catch-penny gimcracks on the approach to the pageant grounds. At one of the largest pageants a conspicuous sign "Beware of Pickpockets" reminded visitors that mankind has not yet reached millennial perfection. Another notice not out of order is: "Please do not smoke". Incense to Lady Nicotine should be offered only on the outskirts of the company. On one occasion a pageant mistress, just before the opening scene, distrib- uted chewing gum to all the principals — a delectable practice if the fletcherizing is con- fined behind the shrubbery. The pageant is good propaganda for winning devotion to a beneficent cause, voicing the interminable wrongs of the world, sowing seeds of discontent, promulgating anarchy, or any incendiary purpose. To paraphrase Hamlet: The pageant's the thing 105 A Handbook of American Pageantry wherein to catch the conscience of the pubUc. The Industrial Workers of the World presented recently, at Madison Square Garden, an industrial pageant reproducing the Patterson strike, and enacted by one thousand workmen. The character of the public appeal will be seen in these three episodes: Episode 1 — Mills alive; workers dead; workers begin to think. Episode 2 — Mills dead; workers alive; strikers in fight with policemen; Modestino killed. Episode 3 — Fu- neral of Modestino; strikers drop crimson carnations on coffin to symbolize their life blood. It is easy to imagine how feelings could be harrowed up by such scenes and an audience inflamed to a high pitch of excitement. Socialists find a bow of promise in the co-operation of the communal pageant, and espedally do they insist upon the free perform- ance. During the production at Bennington, Vermont, a socialist harangued his followers at the public square, shouting: "By what right do the rich dress themselves in old-fashioned clothes and ask that the poor shall pay to see them?" Charitable foundations have been established to redeem rural districts by focusing attention upon the beautiful side of life. Under the direction of competent leaders the Civic Art Movement may weave color, symbolism, imaginative joy into the pastimes of the humble. Custom gives the clergy the lead in providing entertainment for the Sabbath holiday — but who shall take charge of the weekly half -holidays? This is where a clever 106 PURITAN FATHERS TRADING WITH INDIANS. PAGEANT OF DARIEN, CONNECTICUT. BV WILLIAM C. LANGDON- SMOKING THE PEACE PIPE MAKES A PLEASING CEREMONY. PIONEERS MIGRATING WESTWARI:). THli I'ACivWr AT nKKRl'IF.r.D. OX CART IS ALWAYS A PICl MASSACHLSKTTS. BY LRliSQUE I-EATURE. MISS MARGARET M. EAGER Pageantry from the Sociologist's Standpoint pageant-master finds his opportunity. Any fool can work but it takes genius to play. The need of better recreation opportunities for the masses arises from oppressive indus- trial conditions, unsanitary tenement-houses and bar-rooms. Monotony and restriction of lives are sources of mental and physical abnormality. Demand for freer play for mind and body is a demand for the very breath of life. How to utilize this newer relax- ation and larger freedom to release moral, spiritual, physical energies for development, and bring out latent powers of the community, is the problem that confronts the sociologist. With each generation new visions appear toward which the old world eagerly presses on. Civilization carries in its wake a train of civic ailments which call loudly for volunteers in the battle for saving principles. A generation passes off the stage a self -labeled failure if it does not make the world a better place for the next generation to live in. Many are ral- lying under the aegis of the pageant to help this forward movement. One prominent master always concludes his pageants with an open air clinic to diagnose community disorders and demonstrate local remedies. Each person comes to the pageant seeking a different source of satisfaction — the music lover rejoices in some chant or aria well rendered; the politician takes a part to advertise himself in public favor; the genealogist comes in search of missing ancestors; the artist to see high color harmonies exemplified; the settlement worker finds an oppor- 109 A Handbook of American Pageantry tunity for brightening the stunted Hves of children of the slums. Its value lies partly in the length of time that is required for preparation. Interest must be sustained for months together — sometimes for a year. The pageant finds favor with those who welcome the return of outdoor life. In- creasing athletics produce a weather-proof race that enjoys al fresco performances. We are growing to be "bigger-than-weather." Man, as Nature began him, was an outdoor animal, but civilization gradually encased him in a shell. The open air spirit says: "You must not bring to the pageant your grievances, your cares, sorrows, and grocer's bills of the present day— bring only a receptive mood for the beautiful, the good, the true." That was the Greek ideal. As one stands upon the Acropolis at Athens looking down upon the magnificent ruins of the theatre of Dionysius and pictures the scene when Pericles and the Flower of the Golden Age gathered under the open sky in the elaborately carved auditorium to wit- ness the Antigone of Sophocles presented against a background of olive-lined roadways, the Pentelic hills and distant Aegean Sea, and then harks back to a typical American playhouse, poorly ventilated, gaudily furnished with plush curtains, roccoco embellish- ments, flap-seated chairs, electric bulbs, and nickel-in-the-slot allurements, the supremacy and dignity of Grecian civilization in the matter of dramatic entertainments comes forcibly 110 Pageantry from the Sociologist's Standpoint home. Our modern theatre seems a cheaply artificial make-shift. Of course the climate is the secret of the unhappy comparison. Our winter theatre-going season precludes an open-air auditorium; but during the summer months the awakening appreciation of Greek ideals, found in popular out-of-door pageants, warrants the prophecy that torch-bearers of dramatic progress will find this a most fruitful field to exploit and may- hap save the actor who is being driven oif the boards by the "movies." The pageant makes an especial appeal to children. One of the inherent impulses of childhood is to assume a character— to pretend. The mimetic instinct was flogged out of Puritan youngsters who "took off" the parson or tithing man; the trait still lives and now the theory is, that the assumption of a character during the plastic period may help to mould mind and body. Children are so brimming over with dramatic feeling it is usually more difficult to stop them than start them, especially in dancing. While children cannot impersonate adult characters with fidelity, they exhilarate the spectator by their spontaneous and ingenuous eagerness to play such parts. One of the refreshing sights in the country is to see ten thousand school girls of New York holding their May festival at Central Park — hopping about like animated pease-blossoms in their parti-colored dresses. Certain features of the pageant belong peculiarly and solely to children. The lithe and dainty fairy dances cannot be given by grown-ups. One of 111 A Handbook of American Pageantry the happiest scenes ever given in a pageant was the impersonation of the marriage of Tom Thumb and wife at Maiden, Massachusetts. Everybody threw kisses to the bride. Tiny Indians in feathers imitating the Big Chief are sure to win an audience. In schools like the School of Ethical Culture in New York, or the Fitchburg Normal School, children have presented such classic epics as King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Trojan War, or the Quest of the Holy Grail. The Noah's Ark pageant in which ani- mal characters are taken by children provides a very amusing entertainment at the same time for the elders. A Mother Goose pageant was given at Greensboro, North Carolina, and a Baby Pageant at Asbury Park. Constance D'Arcy MacKay has written a splendid pageant for children portraying how great men of America have succeeded in the face of tremendous difficulties. Persons in middle life should take a cue from the "kids" and enter into a pageant with the hurrah of children coming out of school. 112 DANCING "BATS" PERSONIFYING WITCHCRAFT AT SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS THE SPACIOUS PAGKANI' GROUNDS WERE. ON A PRIVATE ESTATE BY THE RIVER y 5 ■— y y y y -^ a < y. -1 P < <■ o .■ H i^ a. CHAPTER VI. The Pageant as a Moral Agent. Sometimes he thinks that Heaven the vision sent; and ordered all the pageants as they went, Sometimes, that only 'twas wild Fancy's play ; the loose and scattered relics of the day. Crowley. EEMS just as if we were going to meetin' ", remarked one fine New England lady to another as they wended their way to the pageant grounds on a summer afternoon. That tells in a sentence the story of the moral value of pageantry. The oil of the sanctuary is a chrism upon it. The salt of the earth who have never entered the portals of a theatrical play-house will take part in a pageant. They look upon it as sanctified drama — acceptable in the sight of the Lord. Although religious drama may shock the sense of veneration of supersensitive persons, the Passion Play at Oberammergau seems a reverent external manifestation of inherent piety. Devout enthusiasts see in a pageant a prayer of aspiration. Pageants may soon be given on Sunday afternoons — even in Connecticut. The local clergy not only countenance this form of entertainment by their presence and participation, but are frequently the prime movers in its affairs. At Bury St. Edmunds sixty clergymen took part. Mr. Parker, the English authority, defines a pag- 115 A Handbook of American Pageantry eant, as a festival to Almighty God in commemoration of past glory and in gratitude for present prosperity. He insists on a religious service during the presentation week — just as the election sermon used to be given in New England. In one Massachusetts village the orthodox clergyman, who had played a part in a pageant the previous week, observed in his Sunday address that two things had impressed him in connection with the production — one of which made him very glad, the other, very sad. First, he declared he could see the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ working through the pageant to bring the community into closer relations and to promote a finer fellowship. That rejoiced him. On the other side, the feature that saddened him was taking the Lord's Holy Name in vain so commonly. Drawing from all strata of society the pageant is likely to bring into play, during rehearsal, some unusual and unexpected vocabularies from those unaccustomed to the godly usages of the pastoral flock. Mr. Parker insists that in all his relations with thousands of players he never was sworn at but once, and that was by a very old man who had no teeth so it did not really hurt or count. But he does not say how many times he himself has been tempted to profanity, nor whether he yielded or not. The arbitrary commands of the pageant master are bound to test the equanimity of many players. A lady who conducted a very large southern pageant states that only one person deserted ill-naturedly. That was a woman whose feelings were hurt 116 The Pageant as a Moral Agent because her little daughter could not wear butterfly wings and dance on a bed of roses. In early England a pageant was a morality play. Before the days of printing, the pageant took the place of the novel with a purpose. Like Artemus Ward's circus it should be a "great moral show", and make some pretence to answer the question: What are we here for, and where are we going. The moral effect of a pageant is distin- guished from the ordinary theatrical play in two especial points. There is safety in nimibers. President Wilson, in his New Freedom, says he is on his best behavior when he is with a crowd of people who know him — his own neighbors and townspeople; and that when he is alone in some far-off, remote country, the temptation becomes strongest for him to transgress the ten commandments. The pageant is a family party — everybody knows everybody else. There is rivalry in deportment. Secondly, antiseptic sunlight and air Idll moral germs as they do disease germs. A pageant is the cleanest form of the drama. Among the butterflies in the clover-fields there is little of the danger which lurks among the footlight fairies. At an outdoor afternoon sociable who could think of poisoning the mind with salacious dialogue; by introducing the sex morbidity of the pantomine "Sumurun"; or the smut and offal, which characterize plays of Brieux, Strindberg, or other pathological dramatists! Under the Hygeian influence of sunlit fields the pag- eant cannot be raw or nasty. Leave the underworld problems to the night theatre. 117 A Handbook of American Pageantry No one attends a pageant to see a stream of social sewage emptied upon the arena. Yellow journals attend to that quite sufficiently. There has been no demand yet for a censor or moral chaperone of pageantry. But there have been instances of ques- tionable artistic taste. For example: In a Vermont pageant a scene was introduced depicting the removal of a cemetery on the top of a hill to make way for a new courthouse. Wooden coffins, supposed to contain the bodies of ancestors of persons sitting in the grand- stand, were borne across the arena. The weary porters paused in view of the audience and set down their burdens to wipe their brows and indulge in persiflage about their occu- pation. A strolling actor happens upon the scene and, in stage slang, suggested by the episode, exclaims "Alas! Poor Yorick!" A Vermont farmer, somewhat hard of hearing, mistakes the allusion and replies that the departed ancestor never visited York State in his life. Such gruesome pleasantry borders upon irreverence. On another occasion, a scene was enacted at which a wounded soldier in the Civil War was brought home on a litter and was borne off into a cemetery which happened to adjoin immediately the pageant field. How much finer was the treatment of the massacre at Deerfield! To avoid an offensive scene the author arranged that the "Flower of Essex" should march away into the woods and that the "massacre" should be announced by a fusillade of shots behind the trees making an impressive scene to the thoughtful audience. 118 THE COURT OF POLVDF.CTES, BALTIMORE. THE CANOPY GIVES THE DESIRED ORIENTAL FEELING VERY SIMPLY. PAGEANT OF HA'lMAKIM;. ILIOT, MAINE. IHK I'AGhAM MAV bKKVK A Vl-.k'k I'RAC IRAL I'Lkl'OSK BY THK KXERCISE OF A LITTLE TACT AND INGENUITY FUNERAL HONORS FOR GENERAL WASHINGTON. BEIORK RK\ OLU TIONAR Y TROOPS AT PAGEANT OF OXFORD. MASSACHUSKTJS. BY MISS KMII.'i A SPRANG. The Pageant as a Moral Agent In America nearly everyone goes to the play but how seldom anyone draws a will in favor of the playhouse. Our millionaires give money to establish schools, univer- sities, libraries, museums, hospitals, churches, conservatories of music. The theatre is an instrumentality for formulating character, shaping conduct and educating the pub- lic as much as the church or school. Why do philanthropic plutocrats exclude it from the field of endowment? There is a lingering suspicion that play-acting is not sanctioned in the light of moral and religious teachings. The idea has not quite reached the minds of many that there are decent people in the Green Room. Bills cannot be paid in stage money. People go to see a play but keep a safe distance across the footlights from the actors. Some day a multi-millionaire may discover in the pageant a worthy vehicle for improving the race, and establish a school for promoting this branch of art. Is the function of a dramatic festival to please or to inculcate an idea, to advance a cause or "to hold the mirror up to Nature and show the age and body of the Time, his form and pressure"? Measured by our twentieth century standards the Roman Circus and the secular games were characterized by brutality and licentiousness. The drama lost pres- tige but has managed to survive and the type of people who deplored its existence now begin to see in it a potential influence for good. The pageant, to reveal the fineness of the American people, must of course avoid the glaring sensuousness and prodigality of 121 A Handbook of American Pageantry those festivals which were its prototype among the Ancients, and eling to its obvious mission of giving purpose to life by visualizing the spirit of America. Different ages and nations have excelled in different traits and gifts; the Hebrews in their genius for religion, the Greeks in art, French in science, Germans in philosophy, Italians in poetry. America seems to stand for the Main Chance. Those who consider "bluff" her most conspicuous characteristic may question whether a pageant is the oys- ter or the shell. Are we living in an "age of scum spooned off the richer past? " Dr. Philip Axton says Americans feel it is big to have money enough to buy pictures, but small to have genius to paint them. The Greek in his glory was visual-minded with acute sensi- bility to the power of form, color, movement. This day of glory has not arrived with the American, who finds more pleasure in earning a dollar than spending it. The bus- iest nation in the world is dead if not doing something for the ampler life of all the people. So long as acquisitiveness is the main characteristic, a race can have no culmination of ar- tistic perfection. The pageant is a reaction against hustling, individual money-grabbing and should be conducted for public weal under the auspices of village improvement so- cieties. In pageantry people work for the love of it. Masterpieces in the arts come when there is no immediate dependence of the creative worker upon payment for his work. The history of the world shows that the arts flourish best when a nation is on the 122 The Pageant as a Moral Agent verge of decay. The other day an over-heated Baptist minister preached about the "rotten borough of the arts". Is the wide interest in pageantry an indication that New England, for example, is going to seed! Not so much interested in what her grandsons can do as what her grandfathers did ! America with a future is better than Babylon with a past. But America can only follow in the steps of other nations, Ferrero, in his History of Rome, emphasizes the fact that the decay of the Empire set in, the day the patricians abandoned the happiness of home for the sensational pleasures of the Circus Maximus. The pageant isnotaproductof heroic. Spartan, self-sacrificing pioneers; it blooms in luxurious prosper- ity. The community pageant, more than any other art, is in the hands of descendants of old, colonial American stock. The tendency of civilization is to promote the parasite. Es- theticism emasculates the race. To the inquiring student of the times the question arises: Are the forces behind American pageantry a symptom of the virility, permanence, con- tinuity of the nation, or the petering-out of sensation-seeking Epigoni! The gray Puritans took their pleasures "sadly", rejecting the theatre as one of the unregenerate excrescences of civilization in the belief that play-acting and dancing were the "Devil's kindling wood". Although scripture contains many pageant scenes, such as Adam driven from the Garden, Belshazzar's feast, or Christ feeding the multitude with loaves and fishes, the old Puritans regarded ritual, ceremony, pomp and color as 123 A Handbook of American Pageantry contrary to the Bible program for this life. They banished the Maypole and Yule log, and put a cold blighting finger upon many innocent amusements. To understand the exact reason why they shunned and rebuked the drama, examine the plays of the Stuart reign with their shocking stories, blasphemy and lewdness ad nauseam — then you will be prouder of your Piaritan ancestry. Hereditary skepticism as regards the stage is found to this day in many families quite otherwise undistinguished for obtrusive piety. However, staid New England villages seem to be undergoing a change of heart, and are bursting through their traditional reserve with exuberant enthusiasm to celebrate their town's history in a gala pageant. "Good times have come to stay" — they exclaim, "let's have the right kind of a good time". The pageant is not steeped in the comic spirit; its essence is designed for the Puri- tan more than for the Bacchanalian or Bohemian; it does not cater to the Great Broad Grin. The slap-stick is carefully omitted. A pageant should be charac- terized by an attentive hush and catch at the throat, as at a Masonic instal- lation or commimion service. It is not the place for one gifted with the "hair-trigger laugh" which transports itself, on the most imperceptible provocation, into a giddy whirl- wind, as the sensitive Aeolian harp is set a-sighing by the lightest zephyr. But the per- son who laughs too much is no less out of place than the one who does not laugh at all. 124 o o A si'iiuri:n l'll^KKlc■ n.wcF. hv bovs in (;ri;i:k i'ac;i:a\t at mim.hi rv. Massachusetts. The Pageant as a Moral Agent The point is to laugh when the laugh comes in — for no pageant can be successful without a modicum of salt wit to save it— some spice for the gallery gods; but in small doses, to act as a foil. None of the rip-roaring "Son-of-the-wine-jar" goatishness and simian antics of the Winter Garden, or Follies Bergeres. Life is a comedy to those who think, said Walpole, a tragedy to those who feel. Balzac wrote the human comedy, but greater masters — Milton and Dante — chose as their themes the Divine Tragedy. Sufficient unintentional burlesque will arise either from mishaps of actors, or animals or inebriate spectators. At Deerfield, as the band struck up "Home, Sweet Home" about ten o'clock at a night performance, a horse which approved those sentiments took French leave of his master, dashed across the arena, and down the street into his stable. On another occasion a lady was so absorbed in the action of the play that when she saw Indians coming to capture a band of women she rose absent-mindedly and cried out: "Why don't you scream and run?" A stray lamb added to the gaiety of a performance by gam- bolling on to the arena and plaintively calling for its dam while a solo dancer was cour- ageously endeavoring to hold the center of the stage. At a New York pageant an "Indian chief" appeared in mutton-chop whiskers which were too sacred to be sacrificed to the higher harmonies of the day. The spirit of the ridiculous always lurks aroimd the comer from the sublime, ready to leap forth and nullify the serious lesson if not kept 127 A Handbook of American Pageantry within bounds. A few cases in point of legitimate low comedy may be cited. Out West, a scene was reproduced where an angry British cavalrjmian, swinging his sword, lopped off a horse's ear. In the pageant the horse appears with two paper ears, one of which is dex- terously amputated with a wooden sword. At a southern pageant, a gigantic gamecock appeared crowing and scratching for grubs in gallinaceous glee. In a Dutch pageant in New York, the miller's wife during the conflagration of a mill, repeatedly fainted into the arms of every handsome volunteer fireman. At Hartford, Vermont, during a Rev- olutionary scene a company of soldiers was called, and only enough reported to leave one pri- vate after the officers had been appointed. The company bravely mustered on the town common and went through their manoeuvers until the single private was so worn out with following the commands of his several superiors that he fell down in sheer exhaustion. At Darien a wily Indian chief sold the same piece of land to several white settlers to prove that the redman was up to snuff in real estate trades. At the Taunton pageant, a boy in the guise of a huge prehistoric frog hopped about the arena as Father Time entered, and presently leaped into the lake and swam away to symbolize the passing of the antediluvian era. A humorous turn is to have some one step out of the audience to mix with the players and correct some clumsy affair of the Past in the light of modem knowledge. 128 The Pageant as a Moral Agent » The concluding question is: Does the pageant justify itself? Is it worth while? Does it go in one eye and out of the other? What is the resultant afterglow? What is the reaction upon the participant, upon the spectator, upon the community at large? The player has had an experience, agreeable, educative, cultural. He has trained his powers of artistic production. He has made new acquaintances. By stepping behind the scenes from the feverish present into the cold past he can more intelligently under- stand the trend of the times, better address himself to the morrow. In a pageant a person visits and shakes hands with his ancestors. Referring to the St. Louis pageant. Miss Rumbold, the promoter, writes : There is not a person who took part in the pageant who has not reared in his heart a memorial more enduring than any monument of stone. The spectator has been refreshed by a form of entertainment, inspiring, satis- fying, delightful. His artistic impulses have been spurred, his mental horizon enlarged. New avenues of reflection are opened up to him. By focusing his attention upon the myste- rious source of existence he sees the portals open to a larger and more beautiful life. No one ever came away from a good pageant without thinking better of his kind. The community at large has been limbered up and given an opportunity for self- expression without which the spirit dies. It makes the neighborhood, for a day at least, spruce up and put on its best behavior like a soldier on dress parade; opens arms of hos- 129 A Handbook of American Pageantry pitality; provides innocuous tea-table gossip. It is a constructive, progressive factor which kindles a new fire on the community hearth and gives a broad and tolerant out- look by which the locality adjusts itself to the Great Scheme of the Universe. Profes- sor Taintor of Wisconsin, writes: "I think I may say that the citizens of Ripon never turned out the lights and went to bed with a more satisfying glow of pleasure at having done something worth while than the night after our local pageant. For weeks after- ward, we were all like children saying to each other as we met, 'Didn't we do it well?' " Every municipality can give one good pageant, although sometimes the soil is well- nigh exhausted if that one is well done. Each town has a distinctive community conscious- ness that differentiates it from its neighbor. Just as each morning's mail looks very much alike externally but, after the contents have been read, tells a different story; so each pag- eant has an outward similarity but always an inner individual soul. There can be no two alike; if they are, one of them is a mere "paper copy". Pageants mark progress. They should also direct progress — project their influence through future generations, saying with Zarathustra: I am of Today and of the Past but something is within me that is of Tomorrow and the Far Future. 130 'LANDING OF COLUMBUS" OBSERVE THAT THE NATIVE CHIEF GREETING COLUMBUS IS COSTUMED AS A NORTHERN ■ INSTEAD OF A SOUTHERN INDIAN. COLlMliUS ATCOlRr OF ISABKI.I.A. GOOD ^AMI'l.tOT SC1|I"11, I'M.l' \M. Al |II11\S(I\, \ l-.R\H)N I, m MI^.S AI.KI'. 1' I- A \ PART IL Technique of Pageantry. If you will see a pageant truly played, Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, If you will mark it Js Toil Like It. ECHNIQUE has been defined as the difficult way of doing an easy thing. There never was an easy way for producing a pageant. Getting up a pageant was once aptly described by a fine old lady, who had been through the mill, as a "Herculaneum task." It is overwhelming, volcanic. Many a director has felt the need of a six months' rest after the production. One master writes: I went to bed the night after the pageant having dropped from my shoulders a burden as large, if not as heavy, as that carried by Christian in the old-time picture illustrating Bunyan's famous allegory. A woman director, during the throes of the presentation, vowed she would go on a spree when the affair was over. "And take me with you", echoed the jaded stage- director. A few women, however, appear to have a gift for pageantry, commanding that ability to do things handily that the average person can accomplish only by "main 133 A Handbook of American Pageantry strength and cussedness". The secret of success is to know what to do. First make everybody feel at home. See that all are heading the same way, not each one in a dif- ferent direction. Much executive ability, a brain well-indexed and infinite tact are called for to get along with the invariable jealousies, whims and crochets of over-emotionalized natures — the lethargies and tardy responses of under-emotionalized natures — the explos- ive temperaments, the delinquents, Mrs. Grundys, busybodies, and a hundred volunteer counselors offering contradictory advice. The pageant-master must marshal a small army made up largely of raw recruits; the leader must orchestrate the whole show into one grand harmony. Not the least of the anxieties of mind to the director are the fifty- seven varieties of American weather which appear on short notice. When we come to consider the rewards of the master who has survived the hazards and distractions of a first-class pageant Dr. Oberholtzer, of Philadelphia, has adequately expressed his feelings : "If there are tears in the eyes of the general standing over and above this scene of his own creation, the surrender will be only human and he may be allowed this moment of tri- umph after weeks and months of difficulties and exasperations of which no other man can know." Just as the Toy Theatre presents drama in miniature so the pagea nt goes to the other extreme and presents drama in la grande mayiiere. The number of untrained ae- 134 Technique of Pageantry tors necessarily calls for a simple technique. Although an amateur effort, there will be more finish and snap if a professional coach gives advice about facial expressions, gesticula- tions, accent, and tableaux on the field. These fine touches impart the thrills which delight and lift a play out of the ordinary. Proportion, harmony, character, rhythm, verve and brilliance are the goals to strive for. A ready-made pageant, such as Joan of Arc, or the Fall of Rome, may go the rounds like a circus, but has no roots in the local soil. If you cut it, it will not bleed because it does not pulse with the life of the people. If you should go on one day to a good commimity pageant and on the next to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show (also known as a pageant), the Wild West would produce more electric thrills by the daring skill of the performers but would not elicit a tug at the heart, nor put you in a reflective mood of thought as would the home-made pageant. The former seems an exotic and parasitic production; the latter organic and culminative. One exhibitional; the other, expressional. No one gives a pageant for the sake of displaying skill in technique. A pageant receipt cannot be written for a sociological druggist to fill. Formula will not produce a work of art — that is a matter of individual consciousness and creative impulse. The pag- eant, like Topsy, just grows. A work of art is the result of an impression that exists in the mind's eye before the artist can express it and is based on imaginative emotion and 135 A Handbook of American Pageantry feelings, not on exact science and reason. Pageantry is not standardized or convention- alized, nor is the nomenclature completed. Much latitude is allowed each master to create something new. The purpose of this guide book is to guard against erroneous methods and false ideals (professionalism, commercialism, sensationalism,) by offering a few suggestions and by showing what has already been done in various places. It is merely an elementary study in pageant anatomy and makes no pretense as a panacea to cure all ills to which the pageant festival is heir. A valuable Guide and Index to Plays, Festivals and Masques for use in Schools, Clubs and Neighborhood Centres was Compiled by The Arts and Festivals Committee of the Association of Neighborhood Workers, New York (1913). Serviceable bulletins have been issued by the American Pageant Association. 136 EXIT OF A MEXICAN EPISODE IN SOUTHERN CAMFORNIA PAGEANT. "INDIANS" IN MUTTON CHOP VVHISK.ERS ARE APT TO START A SMILE IN THE AUDIENCE. I BAII l.K OK SHU'S AT MACllIAS MAINE. PAGKANT. OVKR THK Sim-: OK BOAT DURING THE "KNGAGEMKNl" A POWDER- BLRNEO SAII-OK DKiJl'I'i 1) AND SWAM ASHORE TO REACH A DOCTOR. CHAPTER VIII. The Subject. My Country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. S. F. Smith. VERYTHING has a beginning. The roads to success or failure start at the same point. Hence the importance of starting on the right road. The idea of giving a pageant originates in the mind of someone who is susceptible to the infectious enthusiasm of this fascinating art. The protagonist, most likely an artist, a social worker or local blue-stocking, communicates the idea toothers. "Let's have a pageant", is taken up enthusiastically by a circle of friends, restless and eager to do something new. Enthusiasm must be tempered by reflection and deliberation. Sometimes heat is gener- ated more easily than light. The question at once arises: What shall the pageant be? The first stake to drive is the selection of a subject. There are unlimited possibilities of pageantizing historical scenes or abstract ideals; a thousand pressing interests seek utter- ance and recognition. The pageant may be historic, civic, social, military, ideal, romantic, or like the play in Hamlet, "tragical-historical-comical-pastoral," or what 139 A Handbook of American Pageantry might be called a genre pageant, such as the Dutch pageant at Croton, New York. It may deal with vital modem forces, the Hope of the Future, institutions of our nation, the press, law, railroads, education, athletics, strikes, suffrage, scientific achievements, the vast industries — steel, wheat, fisheries, agriculture. Many phases of our complex civiliza- tion might appropriately find symbolic expression and become educative to the whole people. There have been given in America — a Pageant of the Seasons, Pageant of Education, Pageant of Rural Progress, a Baby Pageant, Pageant of Patriotism, Pageant of Music, Pageant of the Nativity, Pageant of Industrialism, Pageant of the Renaissance, Pageant of the Perfect City, Pageant of the Decline of Rome, Pageant of Illinois, Pageant of the Hours, Pageant of the Sea, Pageant of the Timberlands, Pageant of Peace, and, best of all — a Pageant of Home-making, for that is what pageantry is — love of the race, a reverence for ancestral strivings. That is what takes hold of a person — the appeal from the great, pulsing, eternal heart of the world, with whose destiny every mother's son or daughter is linked through ties of home. In America, there have been many Greek pageants, for example, at Millbury, Massachusetts; Nashville, Tennesee; Baltimore, Maryland and Berkeley, California. These are especially popular in female colleges and are very beautiful in their classic cos- tumes, their simplicity and lightness. These are rhythmic and lyric, while the American 140 The Subject historical pageant is epic— a dignified theme, an organic unity, an orderiy progress of ac- tion. Portraying the life of a community amounts to writing a local Iliad. The one who writes also frequently stages the pageant. The dramaturge should address himself to the work with American optimism; read the histories and talk with the patriarchal men and women of the town; sift evidence, marshal facts from the wealth of local tra- dition and search the comers of forgotten manuscripts, always with a keen eye for the picturesque and dramatic to convey the lesson pleasingly and give local color. He will be surprised as he skims the cream of history, to find how people have been doing just the things that are needed to make a successful pageant. The eye of the artist, the mind of the poet, the ear of the musician, must be brought to bear upon the subject. Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto! This should be borne in mind by the writer. For the pageant is a Baedeker of the Ancient Order of the Human Family. Try for the touch that makes the whole worid kin. Each individual episode should have a unity of its own and at the same time hold its logical place in the unified sequence of the whole production. A perfect pageant should be a spiritual exhalation of community life. Bear in mind that pageantry is veneration for past deeds, devotion to present needs and dedication to future ideals— Realism, Symbolism, Idealism. The emotions must be stured at the same time that the intellect is informed; consequently there must be 141 A Handbook of American Pageantry a play of imagination. The world is enlarged through constructive imagination. But the writer must not have too tropical imagination — he must take precaution to disarm criticism of geneological sharks, positive-minded Daughters of the Revolution, exacting town antiquarians who" are sticklers for the letter of the law. It is important to keep a good perspective. Hold it in one key. This was exem- plified splendidly at Deerfield, Massachusetts, where the production was kept on one harmonious color plane centering around the final struggle between the red and white races. While the introduction of the Grand Army is a popular scene, sometimes it hurts the artistic imity by coming too near the present. Keep away from the unhappy insignia of our impatient era of bargain sales, excursions trains, taxicabs, Tungsten lights, eugenic babies, wrist watches, cash registers, and esculators. By the law of human nature every community produces a local chronicler with an itch for writing. Whether one trained mind should write a book or several working together is an open question. Possibly it remained for North Dakota to compose an ideal pageant book in which eighteen students at University co-operated. 142 rUh JAI'ANKSK IS THK MUST DAIMV AM) COI.ORI- L I. OI- I 11 K lOl.k l)A\ t KS PAUKAN f AT CINCM NN ATI, OHIO. W \S11].NG-10.N CROSSING THK DKI.A W A RK. A fl.KVKR INII k'KI I Mh'X mi \ I'MRKHU INllDI.M BY BOYS IN PAGKANTOX A I'l.AV <.;R01NI) AT M;\\ ARk. MAS JKRSliY. CHAPTER IX. The Site. The place Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames Leaves in the soil its inextinguished trace, Pimgent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, That penetrates our lives and heightens them, or shames. Lowell IRST impressions go a very long way with an audience in the pres- entation of a pageant. The frame comes in for criticism before the picture. There are sermons in stones, tongues in trees, before the human element makes an appearance. If your audience is pleased with the beauty of the setting it is prejudiced in advance in your favor. Although the gate receipts will depend largely upon the ease with which the public can reach the chosen spot, accessibility should be secondary to artistic attract- iveness. At Peterborough, the opening for the arena was made in the deep woods half a mile from any habitation. At Elyria, New York, a festival was given six miles from the nearest raih-oad or trolley line. At Martha's Vineyard the audience passed through 145 A Handbook of American Pageantry an immense poultry farm on the way to a lake among the mid-island scrub oaks. As the pageant arena is measured by acres not by feet, the ideal site may not be easy to find close at hand. The importance of water in the mise en scene cannot be over-emphazised. Poetry and romance are associated with water. Venus was born of the waves. Nothing can supply the charm of a placid lake at the foot of the arena, so that boats may approach with passengers singing a bouyant refrain as they land. Damming a brook for an ar- tificial pond is a common device. In pageants at Ware, Massachusetts, St. Louis, and University, North Dakota the players performed on an island leaving a ribbon of water between the arena and the audience. On Lake Champlain an Indian pageant was given on a portable island improvised by fastening together a number of canal boats and build- ing wooden decks with sloping edges, and then covering the whole with pine boughs, trees, stumps, wigwams, and other paraphernalia. Like the flying island of Laputa in Gul- liver's Travels this island-theatre moved during the night from one point to another. At St. Johnsbury, the pageant was given on the top of the foothill commanding a mag- nificent view of distant mountain ranges. At Oxford, Massachusetts, the Fair Grounds were used; at St. Augustine, the Military Parade; at Lancaster, Massachusetts, the Town Common. A carpet of txxrl is best though sometimes boards are used as at Arlington, Massachusetts. Delightful pageants have been given in classic college cam- 146 The Site puses, such as those of the University of Wisconsin, or Erasmus Hall, Brooklyn. Some private estates have been opened for this purpose. In England, they are often given in the environs of a noted abbey or cathedral half in ruins. An ideal setting would be a natural amphitheatre half surrounding a level area several hundred feet square bordering upon an inland lake and having sufficient over-arching trees to provide adequate shade for the audience. As a work of art has its fullest value in the setting for which it was conceived by the artist, so a pageant when performed on some historic site realizes its fullest possibilities by immediate historic associations. The pageant as a religious ritual could not be more appropriately given than in a cathedral of the forest, as at Redwood, California. The size of the cast is determined by the magnitude of the arena. There must be definite proportions — not too crowded nor too scant. When a throng is to be represented it is better to have them loose and active than compact and inert. A few persons actively engaged in by-play will give an impression of a much larger number than really exists. Ten persons properly spaced constitute a crowd as well as fifty packed together. Long vistas should be utilized for approaches as much as possible and exits should be made as short as possible. (Man is a long while getting established in this world but usually leaves in a hurry.) At Quebec one entrance was a quarter of a mile away. An approaching group would disappear be- 147 A Handbook of American Pageantry hind a hill and then reappear for a moment, whetting curiosity. A well-planned layout of the pageant grounds should provide at least half a dozen exits and entrances. Remember that little artificial scenery can be safely used in the open air. Some landscape gardening of the Italian order may be allowed. Dame Nature makes the best stage carpenter, and such piecing out as may be reqiiired should consist of junipers, or hemlocks, cut down near the root and set in the ground a day or two before the pro- duction. Clusters of trees have been planted a year ahead so that they might appear as if native to the location. Ars est artem celare. To cut off back ground and make an en- closure, a screen of dark blue bunting ten feet high, mounted on poles may be quickly set up by experienced stage hands. A design stencilled upon the bunting embellishes its appearance. At the Quebec pageant a tremendous carpet was brought in by a hundred sailors running at full speed so that it floated in the air like the carpet of Aladdin's dream. At Warren, Rhode Island, a field of com bordering the arena was very appropriately and effectively used as an ambuscade for Indians. At Gloucester, Massachusetts, a fire cur- tain was featured at an evening pageant. For seating the spectators a temporary auditorium of spruce bleachers may be erected and the lumber resold at half-price. Benches are far more comfortable with backs than without. To sit Gypsy-fashion on the ground is most ideal. But custom decrees that the social sheep and goats must be separated. 148 A GOOD ILLUSTRATION OF A DANCING INTERLUDE BEING REHEARSED ON PAGEANT GROUNDS AT CAPE COD THE DAY BEFORE THE FIRST PRODUCTION. - / - X - y ■J-, a l;s J z : 2 en b) B^ o CHAPTER X. The Committees. I'll play my part in fortune's pageant. Shakespeare. RGANIZING a pageant is almost equal to planning a battle or a political campaign. The supreme head is called the pageant master, or mistress, and is commander-in-chief and court of last appeal. The success of the affair, however, depends largely upon the efficiency of the various necessary committees — a committee on grounds; a committee on publicity (including the management of program and tick- ets); a committee on music; a committee to secure actors; a committee on costumes; a committee on finance; all of which should be local people. Other committees may be added if the pageant is a large one. There must be a local chauman of the executive committee, a local treasurer and a secretary whose duty is to disseminate news of the pageant and serve as question box. Three competent and responsible persons are suf- ficient to constitute any of the committees. To enlist a wide circle of workers, there is usually a committee of hospitality, including leading citizens who are not active on other committees; or an advisory committee of patronesses, sometimes spoken of as the "scenery committee." A list of people of talent may give prestige to the affair. 151 A Handbook of American Pageantry The duties of the committees are obvious from their titles. They should be formed early, at least three months before the date of the pageant and preferably six months. The members should be selected with a view to their working together harmoniously as well as to their fitness for their special department. Artists should be on the commit- tees of properties, costumes and the supervision of grounds. The industrious women found in each church sewing-circle should combine in preparing the costumes. Active, energetic women who have plenty of confidence must constitute the committee of regis- tration of actors. This committee to secure actors and conduct registration has the rather unpleasant task of whipping in the tardy and delinquent and compelling punctu- ality of attendance. The best result comes when the actors for each episode are taken from a club, a school, or a church society. Amateur actors may be secured for a pag- eant much more readily than for a theatrical play ; out-of-doors there are more "scenery parts," less stage-fright, less self-consciousness. Solid citizens should constitute finance committees. The pageant costs money to somebody. If what has been styled a major pageant is attempted there must be a guarantee fund either by individuals, by groups, or by the city or large organization. It is necessary to raise a fund of at least $2000 as a foundation on which to conduct business and secure credit for contracting preliminary bills. The two largest American pageants cost many thousand dollars more than were received. Some 152 The Committees have made money; others were given purely for charitable purposes. After a pageant is over the irrepressible cynic often touches a raw spot when he inquires of the master what use will be made of the profits. Prof. George P. Baker holds that a pageant is worth five thousand dollars to any town whether paying expenses or not. The committee on grounds has charge of parking automobiles, supplying refresh- ments, erecting benches, providing ushers. The latter should be in costume. High School girls in dainty toilets of colonial dames make very cheery ushers. At the Mission Pageant of California librettos were sold at the entrance by a real Indian, Chief Chain Lightning. As soon as the project of giving a pageant is determined upon, the best thing to do is to call a joint mass meeting, and announce that some pageant master or prominent official will speak, to point out the possibilities for the locality. By relating the experience of other places, a spirit of emulation and confidence is roused. From the people who attend this meeting, a large general committee is selected, for it may be as- sumed that their presence indicates an active interest in the scheme. The chairmen of these committees should be selected with a view to their capacity for assuming responsi- bility. Ignore indolents, mimimies, shirks. Ability without reliability is aggravating. Immediately each of these sub-committees sets about contributing to the "spirit of 153 A Handbook of American Pageantry the hive." The various chairmen should constitute the board of strategy which meets weekly to give members opportunity to compare notes and assist one another, always in company with the master of the pageant, who, in this way, keeps in touch with every branch of the undertaking. The question of how long a time should be consumed in rehearsals is open for discussion. Some believe that the fewer the rehearsals, the more spontaneous the performance. Rehearsals are misleading, often heart-rending, affairs. The master often has to prop up his drooping spirits by repeating the old adage : A poor rehearsal makes a good performance. Others find perfection and precision exactly in proportion to the number of preliminary rehearsals. A picked-up pageant may be as happy as one long labored o'er. The splendid pageant at the University of Virginia was whipped together in two weeks while that at Belmont Park in Philadelphia was two years in preparation. There is a focus of time as well as of space. The players must be trained sufficiently to comprehend what they are driving at; on the other hand they should not be drilled imtil they grow stale and lose enthusiasm. Jollity, abandon, naivete, gusto, dance attendance on a new affection. 154 < /5 a! O u Q o [xl Q > CHAPTER XL Publicity. Let a man talk a very long while, Let a man talk a very long while, Let a man talk a very long while, A hole he will bore in a rock. Indian Philosophy. A MERICA advertises. To let the world know what you have in the market is the prime necessity. There is no more legitimate way of putting a town "on the map" than through the community pag- eant. The possibilities of advertising are unlimited as the pageant combines Old Home Week, Camp Meeting Revival, Grand Opera, Circus, and County Fan* rolled into one. Publicity must be scattered far and wide to call back wanderers from distant points. A trainload of 250 came across the continent from the Pacific coast to attend the Machias, Maine, pageant. In the matter of advertising you cannot begin too early. A word to the wise is not sufficient. Life nowadays is so full of distractions that many who are not imme- diately interested will not be aware of the pageant unless the news is repeatedly shouted from the house tops. Talk must be of two kinds : talk by the promoters, and talk by the general 157 A Handbook of American Pageantry public. The first is manufactured and forced — the latter voluntary and spontaneous. This is accomplished by systematic methods. Three preliminary announcements are often sent out; the first, four months previous to the production; the second, two months; the third, two weeks. Each of these should be different; phrased in alluring language giving a synopsis of the affair and sent to newspaper editors, librarians, school teachers, public officials, hotel keepers and prominent citizens throughout the teiTitory from which attend- ance is expected. There is considerable literature connected with a pageant. Ingenuity is required to make a sensation which will occupy the front page of local newspapers. The American Press is usually willing to disseminate news about pageants since so large a num- ber are interested that a wide circle of readers is touched. Besides circulars and news- paper notices, a poster is a valuable adjimct in advertising and calls out thoughtful skill for creating appropriate designs — not the dreary, dull, machine-made posters, often reproduced from photographs — something fresh, insinuating, startling, to awaken the imagination. The pageant poster offers opportunity for singing lines and extravagance of composition. The daring swirls of Outamaro and Beardsley, pre-raphaelitism and post- impressionism, Will Bradleys and Nell Brinkleys, may come into play. The blatant and bare-faced prevarication of circus barn-posters is, of course, out of order, for a pag- eant should be marked by reserve and conscience. Banners across the street reach 158 Publicity the automobile public; likewise arrows pointing to the grounds. Special pennants, watchfobs, buttons and other novelties may be sold. Sandwich men, advertising wagons and transparency are rather too common; but a well-costumed Uncle Sam striding through the streets and politely inquiring the way to the pageant grounds of various persons he meets is not ill-advised. Another good plan is to have special stationery, with a pleasing design on the outside, distributed gratuitously, months in advance, to local townspeople who will write to their friends. By sending thousands of attractive envelopes through the local post office no one is allowed to forget the date of the performance. The programs must explain the order of episodes and outline the affair, and need not necessarily be longer than to name the players and the characters assumed. Though often the programs contain a complete libretto and are sold for twenty-five cents as a souvenir to be preserved. They are frequently models of the printer's art. The omission of commercial advertising on these programs is much more agreeable to the esthetic sense if financial conditions will allow. The cover-design of the pageant book should endeavor to suggest the genius loci so that it will be treasured as a keepsake of a red-letter day. On the day of the production an old stage coach filled with costimied colonial dames to pass out flyers around the town has proved successful. Just before the performance 159 A Handbook of American Pageantry trumpeting heralds may ride through the streets serving as appropriate barkers. It is well to encourage the players to dress at home to make people "take notice" as they go to the grounds. A squad of troops crossing the public square with throbbing tread and beating drums thrills the imagination, and reminds the populace that the show is on. m 'J O X a o H Z a S a o z D O z z < o z > Q < Q Z < u b. o •J w z o b. O CO bJ .J CHAPTER XII Dialogue Day unto day uttereth speech. Psalms. p ffi AINT is the medium for delineating external nature but words for himian nature, observes a philosopher. How much dialogue should enter into a pageant has been discussed at length by many author- ities. Whether a deaf person should be able to enjoy the show equally as well as a person in full possession of the five senses is debatable. Some hold that a pageant should be wholly pantomimic— a song without words, a silent drama — partly because in a large out-of-door production, the voice can with difficulty be heard, partly because in an amateur performance there are so few accept- able speakers, and also because the interest is held by the panoramic scene and words only serve to distract from the color. Talk is distinctly human. Audiences are more likely to be bored into weariness by words than by action. Special care must be taken not to allow the spectators to remember that the seats are not upholstered and that they are sitting under the blazing sun. By all means don't talk them into the ground. Others insist upon the spoken word, contending that it is impossible to give a dumb 163 A Handbook of American Pageantry show with complete satisfaction to a human audience; that the charm of the well-trained voice is sometimes greater than the charm of the physical individual; that speech is the polite means of commnication and may touch a chord of sympathy when all other means fail; that it is frequently necessary to put the situation into words — to make sure of "put- ting over the idea." The best result comes when the dialogue is as sparing and meaty as possible — a gem of epigram in a setting of pantomime and music. Stretches of si- lence on either side of a strong sentence are more forcible than a rivulet of words which, brook-like, runs on forever. Reserve is essential. What is left out is often as effective, artistically, as what is put in. Space is a great asset in all the arts. The shout of the multi- tude, a forcible exclamation by a single character, the reading of an important proclamation might be sufficient for a whole episode. A good round oath coming like a bolt from the blue is likely to fix a character in mind. At Bennington, Vermont, when the capture of Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen was portrayed, the fact that he was known to be a man of very robust vocabulary was featured by giving a scene in silence imtil, at the critical moment, when the British officer was captured, Allen with a blood-curdling oath, demands his surrender in the name of the Great Jehovah. Words should mark the culmination of action. Quick, staccato, nervous dialogue of the stage play gives way to heroic rounded periods on the pageant field. The 164 Dialogue task of the librettist is to drape the crumbling ruins of the past in an ivy-mantle of romantic language. Let the dialogue be heroic but not stagey; with some of the stateliness of grand opera. Avoid slip-shod jocularity. Be terse and pungent, not vapid and foggy. If the incident and action are vigorous, the simpler the speech, the more moving it is. Pageantry is so elemental that refinement of phrase, unless cleverly done, will seem flat. Chisel words with granite edges — homely similes, vernacular sayings, native wit, vigorous and sentimental appeals to emotion. A local ballad maybe happily introduced. It is more delightful to an auditor to imagine an idea from a gentle hint than to feel a reflection upon his comprehension by a verbose explanation. To give atmosphere you must love what you are working at; transmute yom'self into your oc- cupation. In preparing a pageant, measure yourself against all of your characters. Wherever possible, feature little-used and obscure incidents which have not grown thread- bare at local firesides. In many cases there will be some dialogue more or less authen- tic, which will supply the kernel for a picturesque incident. It is not always the great historic scene bulking large in history, that is most important; some trifling touch may give character to the entire play. The mind cannot hold more than a limited number of impressions distinctly; therefore a pageant must be kept sufficiently simple to avoid a blur of confusion. 165 A Handbook of American Pageantry The dialogue and action must always have one commanding point. Put the far reaching effects of the incidents in the mouths of speakers in the form of reminiscences or traditions. Many pageant books have been so excellent that they have been presented in other places than those in which they were of local interest just as a good play survives its original place and time. Pageants have been written in blank verse, in rhyme, in tedious prose, in epigrammatic English. In order to have the text survive the occasion, it must have literary quality. Someone who "lisps in numbers" should write whatever verse is needed. The measured iambics of poetry seem most apropos "when Tragedy in sceptered pall comes riding by". Several episodes from different pageants are appended as sug- gestions for those writuag dialogues or scenarios. 166 DANCK Ol- nil-. IM'.VIL AM) IHK NhW l-.Sl.l.AM) O i\Jil I I, Si- I- VIRGINIA TANNER AND FRANK CHOUTKAl' BROWN A 1'agi;ani- solo dancer in full career. ING CARE TO THE WINDS. CHAPTER XIII. Costume. Fashion wears out more clothes than the man. Tailor's Proverb. N costuming a pageant, there are infinite opportunities for those punctilious persons who believe that one might as well be out of the world as out of style. The dry goods department comes in for much discussion, especially by the distaff side of the human family. Emerson speaks of a lady who could get more comfort out of the consciousness that she was wearing a well-fitting dress than she could from the consolations of the church. In pageant costumes a good fit is not to be despised, but general grace of line and beauty of color are the first essentials. For pageant purposes, certain standard types of dress are recognized which will sug- gest at once the different periods. American history begins with the Norsemen and Vikings in their tight-fitting suits of gray and armored breast plates, with wings on hat and spear in hand. The explorers of the Captain John Smith period wore heavy boots, steel corslet and morion, long cloak and sword at the side. Then came the Puritans, the simplest in attire and most beautiful; blue-gray dress for the women, white kerchief, wrist 169 A Handbook of American Pageantry- bands and caps; for the men the steeple-crowned hat, short breeches, buckled shoes and broad white collar. This costume may be used for the colonial type until 1700. The American Indian is readily portrayed with some grease paint (sienna and orpiment), turkey feathers, brown fleshings, painted canvas moccasins and bow and ar- rows. An Indian naked from the waist up and carrying a blanket is best. Indian cos- tumes are made of leather-colored canton flannel, cut in strips, fringed and painted with lines and stripes, then further decorated with beads, claws, shells and feathers. The more blue and yellow paint daubed on the face, the more ferocious and terrifying the braves become. Since the Landing of the Pilgrims there have been ten generations, each with its own peculiar fancies. The pioneer frontiersman must have his coon-skin cap, fringed buck skin coat and long hunting rifle; the sober Quaker, his broad-brimmed hat and dun-colored clothes of simple trimming; the Colonial parson, his skull cap, black flowing gown, white lap- pet, wrist bands and full-bottomed wig; the Southern Cavalier was distinguished from the Puritan by more gaiety and picturesqueness; his hair was long, he wore a mustache and goatee, a white lace collar, velvet cloak, jaunty hat and slender rapier. With the Revo- lutionary Period came more color both North and South; red coats, bright-colored nan- keen waistcoats, white stockings, buckled shoes, and three-cornered hats. The women had their brocades, china silks, and wide skirts with many flounces and furbelows; their 170 Costume hair was dressed high and powdered and they were careful about theu- patches. The period of 1840 marks the appearance of the tight pantaloon, strapped under a calf-skin boot, the top-heavy beaver hat and swallow-tail coat; women wore calashes, mitts and balanced half-grown parasols. The Civil War gives us the veteran with his faded blue uniform; the same period witnessed the culmination of the fashion of wide hoop skirts for women. Mantles and poke bonnets were worn. With this alphabet of characters the essential stages of American sartorial progress may be spelled by the pageant. At the Mt. Holyoke pageant celebrating its 75th anniversary, seventy-five different college girls each wore a costume supposed to illustrate the style of a different year. In order that the wardrobe may yield its maximum service, it must be properly housed and inventoried. Small articles like caps, hats, shoes, aprons, girdles, wreathes, crowns, should be kept separately and a label slip attached. A tiring maid should make it her sole duty to check up every article. Garments in sets like tunics, kimonos, soldier's uniforms, should be folded away in large trunks or boxes. This is better than to hang them upon pegs. The mistress of the robes has an arduous task and never prob- ably was a pageant given in which she could account for every costume that left her hands. Precious heirlooms preserved for centuries, sometimes vanish into thin air. Beware of borrowing these old heirlooms for when a young lady wears a dress which did not be- 171 A Handbook of American Pageantry- long to her own great-grandmother, she may possibly be a trifle careless about its subse- quent destination. Such valued trifles have been fished out of the ash barrel weeks after the pageant. Three kinds of knowledge are needed to handle successfully this matter of costumes: First, a knowledge of color; second, skill in the use of materials; third, a knowledge of prices which enable the costumer to keep within her appropriation. To buy in large quan- tities is cheapest; a large mass of one color or style is most desirable. As to prices, cheese cloth ranges from six to ten cents per yard; silkaline, ten to twelve cents per yard; crepe cloth, from fifteen cents up; muslins and cambrics, six cents up; galatea and per- caline and canton flannel, from twelve cents up. An interesting feature, if one is chemi- cally inclined, is the dyeing of materials to make a soft harmonizing effect, or clear, sharp contrasts. Vegetable or Diamond Dyes may be used. Groups of industrious and willing townswomen should gather for social sewing bees. This is part of the pleasure of the pageant work. At Philadelphia this committee met daily for weeks in Independence Hall. The neighborhood school house comes in handy for this purpose. In England, each participant frequently pays for his or her own costume. The price of home-made costumes varies from twenty-five cents to two dollars while very elaborate costumes may be hired for the siunptuous chai'acters at two dollars 172 THIS YOUNG LADY WORE PANTALETTES IN GOOD SPIRIT. INDIANAPOLIS PAGEANT BY MISS CHARITY DYE. DANCE OF TACITA, THE WOOD NYMPH, AND QUERCl'S. 1 HE FAUN. JULIET BARRETT RLBLEE AND JOSEPH L. SMITH. a: H X H H O Costume per day. Costumes are often the result of immediate expediency rather than finished ideals such as were the pride of the merveilleuses of the French Directory. Co-operative dressmaking is most satisfactory. Let a single work- woman make all the white ruffles and collars, another take charge of the sugar loaf hats; tin buckles for shoes may be assigned to a local tinsmith. Patterns may be prepared from which to make coats, breeches and capes by using heavy wrapping paper. The American Felt Co., of Boston, will send samples of much useful material. Other manufacturers offer sample books. If the mistress of the robes organizes the dressmaking in a systematic way, the better the chance of having the costumes ready in time for plenty of rehearsals. The dress stimulates the acting, makes the pose more natural and more graceful. Young girls must become accustomed to trailing robes or awkward mishaps may re- sult. Long practice is required to wear a chiton or tunic with classic ease and distinc- tion. Lead beads assist in the hang of a garment. Armor, weapons and boot-spurs may, by their jangling, drown out somebody's speech and set the audience a-tittering. In Indiana, a pageant mistress writes that it was only with the greatest coaxing, and after many imsuccessful attempts, that she could get a girl to appear in old-fashioned pantalettes. Perhaps it is unnecessary to mention that cotton batting is serviceable to give embonpoint to deficient anatomy. 175 A Handbook of American Pageantry Books which give valuable suggestions upon costuming a pageant are Alice Morse Earle's "Two Centuries of Costumes in America," Elizabeth McClellen's "Historic Dress in America" (two volumes), "English Costumes" by D. C. Calthrop (4 volumes). An excellent work is "Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century" by M. Edwardes and Grace Rhys, also "Chats on Costume, or Treatment of Drapery in Art" by G. N. Rhead. Indispensible to the costume maker is "Dress Design" by Talbot Hughes. A pageant should illuminate the landscape with a sort of barbaric, oriental splen- dor. Through the costumes the great illusion of color is effected. Prismatic colors un- der sunlight become entrancing. The color scheme must be thoughtfully worked out. Use related colors — blue and green, yellow and gi'een. Colors which harmonize are more pleasing than colors in contrast. Remember that blue and gold, red and green, violet and orange, brown and yellow, always go well together. Under the sunlight "louder", more violent, colors may be used than in the diffused light indoors; atmosphere, distance and natural green subdue color. Avoid shrill greens and raucous blues except in lighter shades. When various colors must come together in a large group, they may be har- monized by introducing a few white, old gold or neutral gray costumes. Black should be used very sparingly unless in a mourning scene; instead, use dark green or dark blue broadcloth for deep effects. Artists themselves seldom agree as to what constitutes art- 176 Costume istic coloring. There is considerable individual liberty on this score. Nature preserves the balance by alternating simshme and shadow, fiery sunset after a gray day, yellow sand against purplish sea, the robin's red breast against the verdant lawn. Only a small accent of bright color should be used to balance wide sweeps of grey or somber tones. In color schemes there are three primary colors : Red, blue, and yellow. Some artists claim that orange, green and purple should be included on the primary palette. The secondary palette is set with single combinations of the foregoing colors, but when we come up to the tertiary palette, we get those delicate gradations of color vibrations which only the master can handle. Those who have an instinctive feeling for color har- monies may accomplish many wonderful effects, but the novice should be extremely careful about venturing with secondary colors. Only a Bakst or a La Farge can lay red against brown or pink against purple with impunity. De Longpre at his magnificent chateau at Hollywood, California, has the spectrum laid out in flower beds in his garden. This plan may be advantageously carried out when children give a floral dance. To those who are up in the finesse of the game every color has a symbolism and a language which appeal to the understanding mind, made much of by the Theosophist cult. Bold, simple treat- ment of form, either in silhouette or broad outlines and flat color masses is generally most desirable at the hands of beginners. Consider masses first and detail afterwards. 177 A Handbook of American Pageantry The pageant worker should understand the value of a dominant color and shape and of daring juxtaposition to create life and movement in masses of color. In processionals the lighter colors should gradually lead up to the dominant note of dark or vice versa. As regards the composition of the processionals remember that up- right lines, as soldiers at present arms, give dignity and stability. To give movement a line should project forward as in a charge of bayonets. To give feeling of rest, horizontal or trailiiig lines, as a person in a sedan chair. The relation of the permanent trees, hills, rocks, stationary features of the landscape, dictate the relations of the lines out of doors; the green of vegetation calls for the complimentary note of red. The position of the various elements, the fluid reds, blues, oranges, purples, moving triangles, squares, circles, serpentine and zig-zag shapes, must be so arranged as to make for unity, rhythm, and order. As one director expresses it: In a pageant there is much disorder, a hap- py tumult, which needs the helping sunlight, willing spectators, and good marching music to link into any semblance of order. The same laws of composition obtain in the living picture as on the canvas of a master painter. At night the calcium lights may more readily effect this result, but out of doors in the daylight there should be a commanding point to which the rest is a supporting lead. Artistic elements must be held in equilibrium. 178 MARKET DAY AT DUTCH SETTLEMENT PAGEANT AT CROTON-ON THEHUDSON. NEW YORK. THE PROPERTIES CALLED FOR COiNSIDERABLE THOUGHT AND LABOR WILLIAM PK.NN AND (JUAKLKS liAKUAINlNt; WLIU llll': KEOMIA' I N I'l 1 N, \ I )l I.CI { I \ I'Al.l ANl Costume The colors of the setting should be echoed in the costumes just as natural feat- ures should be echoed minutely in the properties. Fairies emerging from the woods may- be tastefully clad in costumes shading from Naples yellow to umber. Violet and lilac drapings with green caps are very chic on children. Tissue paper hats, flowers and sashes often look fresher and crisper than those made of cloth. Gauze wings for butter- flies may be easily stretched upon wire frames and attached to the shoulders of children. Imagination and fancy are allowed to play in the costumes for the dances which often present a most admirable suite of color. The best trained artists should be brought into requisition to create the drapings for the different episodes. Laying out color schemes is congenial occupation to them. In making a sketch, use toned paper of quiet green for out-door effects. Use water colors rather than oils. Harmonies are better than contrasts in the very largest masses. It is painful to a sensitive eye in the audience to have colors "swear- ing" at one another. Costumes to be effective need not be made of rich materials. Great discrimination should be used, however, in choosing fabrics that have the quality and color necessary for certain effects. Expediency often du-ects that one should simulate silk by cambric, and velvet and ermine robes with canton flannel and dabs of shoe blacking, but whenever possible, choose fabrics that have the genuine quality rather than mere surface similarity. If economy must be maintained, cheese cloth has beautiful draping qualities 181 A Handbook of American Pageantry and may be easily dyed in charming colors. Designs also may be stencilled upon it. Galatea is an inexpensive fabric which has beauty and firmness without stiffness, and comes in many shades. Crepe paper is cheap and capable of many excellent effects provided it is not touched by rain. Jewels may be made of pasteboard covered with gold paint and tinfoil. To produce a sparkling costume put mucilage on satin and sprinkle with bits of broken colored glass. A group of children in white dresses, though of varied cut and material, may be made to look much alike by uniform headdress, scarfs or capes. A Greek chorus in trailing classic robes with hair in Psyche knots and sandalled feet always makes an attractive appearance. Missiles, tapestry, church vestments, buck- les, furniture and armor may be left to the ingenuity of the local Arts-and-Crafts societies. Papier-mache is valuable for making masks, helmets, greaves and light properties. Forts may be constructed of log slabs readily fastened by hooks. 182 CHAPTER XIV Music Listen to the song of life. Light on the Path. USIC is the most subtle spiritual agency in nature — something vibra- ting above human experience — invisible, intangible, incorruptible. Someone has styled it the "breath of Heaven." The happiness of living has always been made manifest in song. Dr. PIai-1 Muck, leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, says: A man can- not sit down to write music with hate and evil passions in his heart. The finer aspu-ations of the pageant will be conveyed through its music. A pageant was given at Peterborough, New Hampshire, the home of McDowell, the composer, where an attempt was made to interpret the spu-it of the town through tone harmonies. Music is the most readily appreciated, without training or education, of all the fine arts, and is the most social because it may include a large number in its common produc- tion and is the most natural medium for expressing the emotions of a popular gathering. The interest of the crowd may be held by music which could not hold the indifferent individual; a whole audience may be swayed by its power. Music 183 A Handbook of American Pageantry- calls up trains of memories and not only soothes the savage breast but touches a respon- sive chord in the most cultured bosoms, intensifying the moods of man. In the last act of a play when the heroine finally melts in the arms of the hero the emotional appeal to the audience is enhanced by tender strains upon the violin and when some stealthy deed of wickedness is to be enacted the sinister feeling is heightened by wierd and creepy music (albeit "high-brows" consider this a vulgar device). Berenger said: Let me make the songs, and I care not who makes the laws, of the nation. Plato speaks of the medicinal attribute of music. Restaurants recognize its digestive power. If an eloquent orator, a superb dancer and a finished orchestra were each in turn to make an appeal to an audience — while the dancer might receive the most vo- ciferous applause and the orator might strike the deepest chords of reason, the music would lift the audience to the highest and purest emotional heights. There must, of course, be a director for the vocal music and his task is not a light one. Many rehearsals will be necessary. There must also be instrumental music which, in part at least, should be composed for the occasion. Home-made music is not al- ways such as will become immortal, but fulfills the purpose. Different motifs may be worked out for different themes, as the forest motif in California, the life-saver motif by Daniel G. Mason at Cape Cod, the mountain motif by James T. Sleeper 184 PILGRIMS SIGNING TRIiA 1 V WITH MASSASUlT. NOTIi ACCOMMOUAITNG INDIAN CONVERTING HIMSELF INTO A TABLE. y. o I o r* r- ■J, y. y "i. a: i- ■■^ y. r5 X - o i- O X - Music in Vermont. During the interludes the syncopated tempo of modern dance music may be introduced without impropriety. If the pageant is given on a very large arena, with wide reaches of open field, a full brass band maybe necessary; but if it is compact and condensed into a small compass, a ten-piece orchestra is much more in harmony. Try to have the orchestra invisible. A sunken pit before the bleachers might be successful. Better to screen the musicians behind a reredos of shrubbery or evergreen trees cut down and arranged as if in natural growth. Especially should this be the case with a miscellaneous local orchestra, which has had little experi- ence in playing together. It is desireable to use local musicians but the charm of a pageant is grievously marred by the presence, in full view of the audience, of an or- chestra in which fat, perspiring, be-spectacled women are sawing away on violins and puffing at clarionettes. In selecting the musical instruments keep as near the Pipes o' Pan as possible and far from the victrola or "canned music." Whenever the Ameri- can orchestra attains that final completeness of the ancient Egyptian orchestra which had instruments to imitate the sound of the wind in the trees, the waves of the sea, birds and animals, the voices of nature, it will be peculiarly fitted for out-door work. Many favorite songs are commonly used in pageants. The selection of suitable hymns will give joy to the local hymnologist. The old English Bridgewater, Federal 187 A Handbook of American Pageantry Street, Duke Street, Old Hundred, the Doxology, are very appropriate. The spirit soars to hear a crowd in the open singing The New Jerusalem or How Firm a Foundation, Auld Lang Syne, Home, Sweet Home, (a brutal assault upon the feelings, said Stevenson), The Same Tides Flow, Old Grimes, express the reminiscent mood; for a stirring march. The Men of Harlech, Onward, Christian Soldiers, Mussards 1840, Coronation March, the Processional from Tannhauser; or more popular, Sousa's Stars and Stripes, Yankee Doodle and Dixie. For dance music. Uncle Jedediah, Turkeys in the Straw, Money Musk. Appropriate Indian music has been written by Arthur Farwell, Charles W. Cadman, Alice Fletcher and Natalie Curtis. The effect of vocal music is enhanced when sung in boats across the water. Antiphonals by groups approaching in opposite directions are marvelously effective if done harmoniously. Magnificent verses by Rev. Philo W. Sprague of Boston, have been set to music by various composers for an opening chant by Father Time: I came, I know not whence. I go, I know Not Whither. Eye of things created ne'er Upon my coming looked, nor shall it see My passing. First and last of all things I, — For I am Time. 188 Music Upon the whole of thmgs that little man Calls universe I looked, ere yet the hand Creative wrought. I saw when Order out Of Chaos came and suns and stars were bom, — For I am Time. I've seen the birth of man; seen how through strife, And strain, and struggle man has doffed the brute And donned the human; how with toil and tears Man rises still and learns that he is soul, — For I am Time. A national pageant anthem has been written by Katherine Lee Bates, first sung at Port- land, Maine, July 4, 1913: Oh, beautiful for spacious skies. For amber waves of grain For purple moimtain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood, From sea to shining sea. America! America! 189 A Handbook of American Pageantry An exceptionally fine hymn, which should become a pageant classic, was com- posed by Brooks C. Peters for the St. Johnsbury pageant. Many of our American pageants have closed by the congregational singing of America, "The Star Spangled Banner," or some well known hymn such as "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past". These are sung standing, the audience rising as is customary in the Hallelujah Chorus. The Dutch, Swedes, Cavaliers, Huguenots, and other pioneers claim they are slighted in the choice of America as national anthem, which mentions only the Pilgrim Fathers. "It is disgusting," says one writer, "to witness an audience in America scrambling to its feet at the behest of the fiddle." Here is a question for the pageant to decide: \^Tiether or not the national hymns America and Star Spangled Banner shall be sung "on the legs." 190 DANCING THE EARLY ENGI ISH CAROLE IN APPROI'RLATE COSTUME. PAGEANT OF NORTHAMPTON. MASSACHU.SETTS. Z < O < :i >^ "H^ 1 • • ■ ^. '■''~y a: o < u . < z UJ «: o a: < u a. •J z o o z I y. f- < or! ■J D a: a CHAPTER XV Dancing For sports, for pageantrie and playes, thou hast thy eves and holydayes; On which the young men and maids meet, to exercise their dancing feet, Tripping the comely country round, with daffodils and daisies crowned. Herrick OUSSEAU pronounced song and dance the twin children of love and leisure. Very properly then they belong to pageantry. Dancing is the sauce-piquante of a human festival, relieving the grave historical groundwork of a community pageant like a delicate pattern of embroidery on the edges of a garment. Dancing is physical cult\ire in the form of glorified motion; producing a psychological as well as physiological experience. In earliest days it was not only healthful and ornamental, but religious and sacred. The dance as it appeared in primitive races (and it is as old as the human leg) was the most immediate and efficient expression of feeling. Barbaric races found in it the intensest enjoyment of which they were capable. When scuplture was rude, painting crude and poetry unknown, the dance was perfected and men and women kept ac- ■ curate time and cadence in their movements. It was symbolism pure and simple. The conclusion of peace, ripening of the harvest, beginning of warfare, initiation of youth into the 193 A Handbook of American Pageantry mysteries of manhood, meeting with friends, return from a successful hunt, recovery from ilhiess, end of a period of mourning, each had an individual meaning and movement. As civilization advances social life becomes more reflective, less impulsive. Life's poetry bums out as man approaches the sun. The odes of Pindar recited to the accompani- ment of lyric dance and music was a pageant morceau of the Golden Days of Greece. Homer spoke of dancing as the sweetest and most perfect of human enjoyments. But the dignified Roman law-maker Cicero said: Nemo Jere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and Sallust went so far as to write: She dances too well for a virtuous woman. The language of action is most readily understood by the entire human family. No other art moves and excites all persons so easily. What cannot be said, can be sung, What cannot be sung, can be danced. Those who cannot converse with one another by word of mouth can imderstand the language of a dance of fear, of love, of jealousy, of anger, of adoration, of beauty, of in- spiration; dances of spring, summer, autumn and winter; dances of courage, victory, witchcraft; dances of gnomes and fairies; dances of birds and butterflies, flowers and trees and plains; dances of sheer joy of breathing the breath of life. As a means of developing elasticity of body, spontaneity of movement, the classic 194 Dancing and lyric form of dancing is recognized by educators. It induces higher vitality, broadens the powers, stimulates the imagination, making a student a finer being than he could be without it; besides providing outlet for the natural impulse to move the body to musical rhythm. "If there were more dancing in the world there would be less sickness, sorrow, ugliness, wretchedness," says a prominent pageant dancer of Boston. The dancing master of Moliere declared: All the misfortunes of men, all the fatal reverses that fill the world's annals, the blunders of statesmen and the shortcomings of great cap- tains, have arisen from their not knowing how to dance. Tracing the evolution of dancing in America we see that leaden-footed Pioneers frowned on all pleasures of the senses and held up a warning finger against the instinct for beauty in the spirit life. Before the Revolution an effort to establish a dancing school in Bos- ton failed dismally. The young fry of the eighteenth century in their exuberance presum- ably skipped about in total depravity shocking the parson and church elders; but when- ever the Revolutionary patriot danced it was with great simplicity, with measured step and a few gestures, gallant bowings and parades around the assembly room. Less than a century ago the waltz was introduced from Russia and Vienna. The multiplicity of modem dances is evidence that the human race was intended to express itself in rhyth- mic motion. Dancing is the natural concomitant of music. As soon as the band begins 195 A Handbook of American Pageantry to play the body begins to vibrate in sympathetic unison when a person has imagi- nation, feehng, and a sense of rhythm. In the pageant festival, we find the de- scriptive or story-telling dance; the symbolic and classic dance; the folk dances; the graceful solo dance; and the formal collective social dances. Those muscle-dancers who so delighted King David would be no less out of place than the tainted tangoes of the Palm Garden or amorous embosomings of the Summer Pavilion, Enough for America to be humiliated by cards posted in continental dance halls of Europe — "American dances prohibited." No prize cups in pageantry. Rhythm and grace are their own rewards to persons of good taste, and sensitive to criticism. The evidence is sufficient to prove that dancing is an elemental phase of life and a justified ingredient in pageantry-— especially folk-dancing. The folk dance is the spontaneous expression of enjoyment of the homely life of a people and is always different in different nations — never a dance solely for art or for effect, and does not lead to social delirium. This kind of dancing has not prospered in America notwith- standing the late popularity of the "cake-walks." Madame Pavlova after touring the country inquired if the turkey-trot was the national folk-dance. The Virginia reel comes nearest, perhaps, to an American folk-dance and often becomes a racy shake down where individuality and high spirits reveal themselves in many odd kinks and capers kicked 196 THE EXQUISITE FRENCH PAVANE DANCED UPON AN IMMENSE CARPET AT QUEBEC A HIGH CLOTH SCREEN MOUNTED ON POLES TRANSFORMED THE ARENA INTO \ TEMPORARY INTERIOR THRONE ROOM. MERRY SHEPHERDESSES WITH THEIR CROOKS IN A RUSTIC DANCE IN SOUTH CAROLINA PAGEANT. C;R0UP ok WKi.l. COSriMKD CRKKK DANCKRS IN PAGEANT OF THK TRICK, BOSTON. Dancing out to suit the different temperaments. The various nationalities which congregate in every city and town have each a distinctive folk-dance — Italian Tarantella, Portuguese Cham- arita, Scotch Fling, Irish Reel, Polish Mazurka, Spanish Fandango, Hungarian Csardas, French Pavan, Swedish Fjallnaspolska. Through these folk-dances the final episode of the Hope of the Future is made alluring to the foreign-bom population. The Morris dance in many variations is always a part in English pageants. The weird and clumsy posturings of Indians will be readily taken by boys who scorn the lighter graces of civilized dances, A book by Elizabeth Burchenal, giving the folk-dances taught in the New York public schools, may be purchased at a small cost. Other valuable guide books are "Esthetic Dancing" by Erail Rath, the "Folk Dance Book" by C. Ward Cramp- ton M. D., "Dramatic Games and Dances" by Caroline Crawford, "The Festival book" by Jeanette E. C. Lincoln, "Play Songs" by Alys E. Bentley. The interludes between the acts may be utilized to knit the story together by beau- tiful sjonbolic dancing. For instance, at a pageant in Vermont the spirit of the moun- tains appeared at the beginning of the production; in a pageant on the sea-coast the Spirit of the Sea was given to the music of the Blue Danube waltzes; in the Old Colony a descriptive dance presented the Devil and the New England conscience in mortal strug- gle. At Deerfield a will-o'-the-wisp dance was given at night by a young woman waving a 199 A Handhbook of American Pageantry wand with electric light at the end. At Medway, Massachusetts, a bevy of girls array- ed as scarlet cannon-crackers gave a striking patriotic dance. To release captive toy balloons in a dance makes a happy effect. Much of the dancing is barefoot, returning to the Greek methods — a most salutary, hygienic and graceful form of exercise (provided fiendish boys have not scattered tacks upon the greensward). With woman rhythm is instinctive. The female form divine in graceful action supplies the most delightful sensation in the world. The "disturbing sense of Beauty" is acquired by spontaneous and instinctive bodily movement, and is often crushed out by mechanical, conventional instruction. As Jacques-Delcroze, who conducts a school of eurhythmies at Vienna, sajrs: The body becomes a wonderful instrument of beauty and harmony when it is trained to vibrate in tune with artistic imagination and collaborate with creative thought. When someone asked how old one should be to learn to dance, Mrs. J. J. Storrow promptly rejoined : "Just the age you happen to be." Then let everybody join hands and "dance with joy upon the catafalque of yesterday." 200 CHAPTER XVI. The Presentation. Ye who would learn the glory of your past and form a forecast of the things to be, Give heed to this, a city's trumpet blast, and see her pictured life in pageantry. F. H. IVilliams. HE day before the first performance the real exhilarating pageant spirit begins to be felt in the air. The public has been brought to a high pitch of curiosity by advertising and the pleasant pre- liminary gossip. The town is ^?z/^/^. The activities of the day of presentation, when the pageant bursts into life, like a gorgeous butterfly from the chrysalis, rival those of an ant-hill in midsummer; everyone is hurrying to and fro; you meet Governor Bradford in a sugar-loaf hat crossing the town square; a band of feathered Indians whirls by in an automobile; Puritan women, daintily dressed, sit beside you in trolley cars; Continental minute-men galloping through the streets contribute to the holiday atmosphere; even George Washington, redivivus, may waive dignity to ride a bicycle without exciting surprise. The uninitiated will not be fully awake to what the pageant means until they see fellow-townsmen transfigured into strange characters by showy costumes. 201 A Handbook of American Pageantry It is a busy day for the master. He must be in all places at once and yet have one headquarters. It is customary for the pageant master, during the production, to take a position at the top of the grandstand. A "conning tower" was erected at one large pag- eant — an unsightly object for spectators to look upon which should have been softened by draperies or evergreens. In a large pageant the master communicates with his various groups at the dressing rooms by a series of electric bells (producing a resemblance to a Western Union office), and controls cheering, laughter, groans, by flags. In a small pageant he may stand at a commanding point, megaphone in hand, and thus address the players. A clock-work precision is to be aimed at, and this can only be acquired when everyone acts well and promptly his part. The machinery must not break, halt or creak. Let nothing come tardy off. The public wants movement, action, life, snap. The pageant must be well grouped (having good composition as artists term it), and must not be rigid or too formal, but fluid and moving. In laying out the scheme of action, remember that a varying proportion is most pleasing; that large numbers should be succeeded by a single individual holding the center of the stage. Mass movements are especially telling. A well-articulated pageant has diversity of movement in which the component acts and episodes, must be united by the invisible strands of imagination. Effect by contrast should be aimed at, leaving the rough edges to 202 PAGEANT ON A "FLOATING ISLAND" AT LAKE CHAMPLAIN. THE ISLAND WAS MADE OF A SUPERSTRUCTURE UPON CANAL BOATS AND WAS TOWED TO VARIOUS POINTS ALONG THE SHORE. SHEEP ADDED TO THE PASTORAL BEAUIV OK THE GREEK PAGEANT, AT NASH\TLLE. TENNESSEE. DELIGHTFULLY Et-FEfTIVE DANCE WITH GARLANDS OF LAI RKL LEAVES AND BOLD, SIMPLE DRAPERIES. Presentation be smoothed over in the minds of the audience by interludes, usually symbolic, bridg- ing the change of properties and costumes. The bones and muscles may be visible, and this supplies the feeling of vigor and vital permanence. In regard to the number of episodes, these run from three to eight or ten, and may vary in length from ten to thirty minutes. A five minute prologue, five episodes of about twenty minutes each and four interludes will allow, with slight delays, for a two-and-a-half hours' entertainment. There should be at least one full dress rehearsal and preferably two upon the arena. Other rehearsals in small groups should precede the final one, and at these rehearsals, music may be supplied by a violin or a decrepit piano placed under a temporary shed for this purpose. Performers should, of course, remember to face the main audience as much as possible. An emergency tent in charge of Red Cross nurses is important. At one pageant when the temperature was one hundred and ten degrees boy scouts were kept running with pails of ice-water to keep players from swooning. The best pageant begins "doubtfully and far away"— with the stately presence of Father Time chantmg a hymn; or the spirit of Prophecy; or with a symbolic or fairy dance by the spirits of nature which precede man's occupation of the earth — mountains, brooks, rivers, trees, and birds in communion; sometimes a pageant opens with a whoop, a war-whoop by a band of Indians rushing in from several points; or with a crash of 205 A Handbook of American Pageantry orchestral instruments or an opening processional chorus, especially for a Greek pageant. All the incidents culminate in the grand final tableau which is currently styled the Grand Walk Around, or March Past, — when all the various players, with the portable properties, appear in a gorgeous labyi'inthine cavalcade, but not so chaotically that they may not disperse in the utmost order. In the very hour of triumph the pageant-master's cup of happiness may slop over. Suppose that a cunning and adventurous suffragette, astraddle a horse, having body guard of Indians with scalping knives, and as rear-guard, an automobile bedecked with the inspiring banner, "Votes for Women," should suddenly appear upon the scene and insist upon a place in the grand final procession. The pageant-master frantically shouts through a megaphone, "Away with 'em" ; stage directors behind the scenes endeavor to re- strain the interlopers; the suffragettes strenuously insist upon carrying out their coup; the audience begins to giggle;— to lean once more on Shakespeare: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in. /4s You Like It. 206 EXTRACTS FROM LIBRETTOS. PAGEANT OF OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN. Episode IV. The Coming of the Missionaries. (The Dominant Note of this Episode is Religion.) In the fourth episode is depicted the coming in 1670 of the first missionary, Father Allouez, to the Indians of hske Winnebago and the Upper Fox. This zealous missionary attempts to give these savages an idea of the true God. The most of them show how grotesque and even ludicrous is their conception of what he says, but here and there one seems to catch the spirit of it, if not the understand- ing. Allouez shows them a picture of the "UniversalJudgment," and takes occasion to describe to them something of the torments of the damned and the happiness of the saints. Allouez {to the Chief): Oh my Brother, I come to bring you tidings of great joy. I come to tell you of the greatest of all Manitous — the ruler of heaven and earth. The Chief: We welcome thee, Black Gown. It is well thou comest to visit us. The Sioux and the Iroquois are eating us up. Take pity on us. Take pity on us! We are often ill. Our children are dying. We are hungry. Hear Me! I give thee tobacco to smoke. Manitou, let the earth give us com {All the old men utter aloud, "Oh!"), and the river yield us fish. {"Oh'"). Let not desire kill us any more nor famine treat us any longer hardly. {"Oh!"). Hear us, Manitou! Allouez: my Brothers of the Forest, I am not the Manitou who is the master of your lives. I obey the Greatest Master and bear His word to all the earth. Your vows must not be made to me. Make them to the only and the true God. He is the sole master of all things. I am only His messenger, but wise men nevertheless willingly listen and obey the Black Gown, who is heard by the great God and is his interpreter. 208 GOV. HUTCHINSON AT PARTY IN PAGEANT AT MILTON, MASSACHUSETTS, BY JOSEPH LINDENSMITH. THE STAGE COACH AND FOUR ADD STATELINESS AND DIGNITY. RRflAKI) U A I. LACK I-INI5S MIS LOST Will;, A HAPPV rAuivwr Ai riii.noKD. \lkmum, on DOMliSTIC TRADITION PACKANTIZKO. UANKb or CONNLCTlC'Ll' RIVKR. Extracts from Librettos Chief: We thank thee, Black Gown, for coming to console us in our affliction. We are the more obliged to thee inasmuch as no one hitherto hath shown to us that kindness. Do thou, Black Gown, who are not dispirited and who taketh pity on people, take pity on us as thou shalt deem best. Allouez: It is only from the Great Spirit of all Spirits that what you ask can be obtained. This and infinitely more shall be yours if you love and obey Him. He for love of us all was nailed to the cruel cross. An Elder: Will your God for love of us keep the little papoose from crying with hunger? Will He make our young men strong? Will He save us from our hated enemies? ( He turns and looks jrom the men to the cross and speaks scornfully.) The strong winds of the air will break that to pieces on the hard earth. What will your God do then? What of Him if the lightning burns this to ashes? Or the thunder-bolt from the skies shivers it to pieces? Or the snows of the cold, cold winter cover it deep? Allouez: Even so. Even so. But neither the lightning not the thunder-bolt, neither the fierce wind nor the freezing snow can destroy the love of God, which shall be buried deep in your hearts. Be patient, for the days in this land where you suffer will be short, but the days in the land beyond will be without end. Learn to love the Great Master, and peace and plenty shall be yours in that far away land. Young Indian {in an aside to a dog which has followed the Frenchman). Tell me, O Captain's dog, what is the state of affairs among our enemies. Thy master hath told thee. Thou hast followed him every- where. Do not conceal the matter from me, for I dare not ask your master. Allouez: Look upon this picture which tells of that time when the small and the great— the chief and the child— shall stand before his God. On that last day there shall be thunder and lightning, the heavens as a scroll shall be rolled together, and every island and mountain shall be removed out of its place. Unto the wicked a loud voice shall cry as a roaring lion, "Woe! Woe! Woe!" And the smoke 211 A Handbook of American Pageantry of the tormentor shall ascend forever. But if you love the Great Master you shall live with Him in perfect peace. In that land there shall be no cruel enemies to harass, and you shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of Paradise. Chief: Oh, have pity on us! Stay with us and keep us from the fire that never goes out. Thou couldst dwell here to protect us from our enemies and teach us how to speak to your God. Allouez: My dear brothers of wood and stream, what your chief says I much approve; and when the red leaves fall to the brown earth, I shall give you my answer. In the meantime, before this cross at sunrise and sunset let your pleadings rise like sweet incense to the Great Master of all. {An old Indian immediately offers the incense of his tribe — tobacco. He takes a handful or two of powdered tobacco and pours it over the cross and over Allouez. Father Allouez falls on his knees before a cross and a few of the Indians imitate him. After a silent prayer, Father Allouez lising, recedes from the scene, holding in his hand a crucifix. As he slowly steps backward he repeats the following:) Allouez: "Peace be with you Peace be with you and your people, Peace of prayer and peace of pardon. Peace of Christ and joy of Mary." 212 COLUMBUS PAGEANT AT JOHNSON, VERMONT. EPISODE I. Columbus at Play, Characters: Christopher Columbus, a little boy. Bartholomew, brother to Christopher. Marco, ^ Beatrice, V playmates to Christopher. Catherine, ' Setting. Columbus and playmates on the seashore at Genoa, watching a departing ship. Christopher (Admiringly): There she goes! Isn't she a gallant ship? How smoothly and swiftly she glides along! Some day I will have a ship of my own and sail to distant lands. Bartholomew (Wonderingly) : But father wants you to learn how to comb wool. Columbus (Impatiently): I can't help it if my father is a wool-comber and every one expects me to follow in his tracks — I want to be a sailor! Children (In amazement): A sailor! Columbus: Yes, a sailor! One of the brave, daring sort! Boys (With great enthusiasm) : Yes, brave and daring. Columbus: But I wouldn't go the old way all the time; I'd do something different. Beatrice: Chris, I get tired of talking about big taings. Let's play house. Girls (Clapping hands): That's always fun! Bartholomew: Boys don't like to play house. 213 A Handbook of American Pageantry Boys (In disgust) : Of course we don't. Bartholomew (Looking admiringly at Chris): I'd like to be a sailor myself, but I never could be one- half as brave as Chris. Marco: No, nor think of half so many things to say. He makes you feel wild and desperate. Catherine: You think Chris is a wonder. Girls (In disgust): A perfect wonder! Marco (Sneeringly) : Girls can't like anything but dolls. Boys (Chanting): Just dolls, dolls, dolls! Christopher: Oh, come! Let's not have a quarrel. I have a great idea! J II: Hurrah! Let's! ear it! Beatrice: Chris always has such good ideas. Catherine: He always thinks of something new. Jll: Something new! A treat! Christopher: Well, here we have it: you girls are to keep house. Girls (Dancing around stage): Good! Good! Good! Bartholomew (Sullenly): I don't see as that will interest me much. Marco: Or me! (Boys walk about with heads down.) Christopher: I guess you've forgotten what the master said, "Girls before boys." Boys (Coming back): Oh, go on! Go on! Girls (Clapping their hands): Good! Good! Christopher: I'll take the boys who have some courage and — (Boys interrupting.) I have! I have! Christopher: But before we make more plans, we must have a map. Come here on the sand. It will be done in a minute. (All gather around Chris on the sand.) Bartholomew: You remember what father told us last night, don't you, Chris .^ 214 THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN IN HUDSON-FULTON PAGEANT. LOCAL LEGENDS MAY BE CLEVERLY PAGEANTIZED. VIMA INDIANS IN IHK CI.ARI-.MONT FACKAN l.. Sor 111 KRN CAI.IH)RNI\. Ai'l'l- \ ! > s A SL'UDEN SHOV\ER IS ONK OF THE HAZARDS OF PAGEANTRY. CIVILIZATION RAISES AN UMBRELLA. THE ABORIGINE IS 'BIGGER THAN WEATHE.1." r. -o ■ 7. 9x y. /: o < a, a O - X y J n y~ Extracts from Librettos right. I know how to work hard. I can make my way. Mrs. Edwards: Well, maybe you would. I hope so. Joe Edwards: Others have. I can do what others have done. George Edwards: (going to see about oxen and their feed): It costs more to live in the city, and it's not easy to get a job down there as soon as you get off the train. We have not the money to keep you going down there long. Mrs. Edwards: You are our only child, Joe, and we've always done everything for you we could — Joe Edwards: I know you have, mother. Mrs. Edwards: And planned everything the best we knew how for you, to leave the farm to you just as your father got it. He has always said he would not sell an acre of it, because he said he wanted you should get the whole farm, the old family homestead, just as it has always been in the family. And sometimes it has been pretty hard. Joe Edwards: I know, mother, you and father could not have done anj^hing more than you have for me. And I want to make the most of it I can. (Joe puts his arm around his mother and kisses her; George comes up and puts his hand on Joe's shoulder.) George Edwards: You are a good boy, a good son, Joe; and you always have been. Here, Joe, — here's the whole farm that's going to be yours some day. You are keeping company with the school-teacher. She's a fine girl; we like her. I'll set you up right now; stay at home. Joe Edwards: Thank you, father. But there is not enough in the farm for all of us the way we are working it now. It will not take care of two houses. You know it won't. Mrs. Edwards: What's to hinder you living right on with us? We'll be glad to have Lettie. Joe Edwards: It's new ways of working the farm we need, mother. We could never get ahead if I did that. I must go and learn how first. I must learn a way to get ahead a bit in money. 229 A Handbook of American Pageantry George Edwards: Same as Luke Harding. Mrs. Edwards: Don't, George. Don't go away, Joe! We don't want you to get into any trouble, or run the risk of it. We love you, Joe, and we want to do for you. Joe Edwards: Oh, I'm not going to get into any trouble. George Edwards: Neither was Luke. No, he was going to make a fortune in New York. Some one else made the fortune, — all Luke had of it. He had a try at the bread line. Learned to drink, that's about all he learned. Joe, we don't want you should turn out like him, — just as you are starting out to be a man and a credit to us. Going that way, you can't succeed, Joe. Joe Edwards: Well, if you think I am no better than Luke Harding, — if you think I am that sort — ( He flings off, goiiig up the field. Enter from the northeast Lettie Davis, the school-teacher, with a number of little children, dancing about her and crying out, "School's out! School's out!" One little girl runs up and takes her hand and walks along with her teacher.) Lettie Davis (seeing Joe going off up the field) .• Oh Joe! (Joe turns and comes back down to meet her without saying anything. Lettie sends the little girl on ahead; the children go out.) Lettie Davis: What's the matter, Joe? Joe Edwards: The same old thing — only Father says that if I will stay he will set me up right off — Lettie Davis (eagerly): Does he? Joe Edwards: There is not enough in the farm for all of us the way it is run now. Lettie Davis: But you would do so much with it. You are younger than your father. I know what you could do. I am not afraid to trust to you. Joe Edwards: It isn't a matter of working hard. When Father was my age, all his future lay right here in Thetford. Now it's different. Business is a good half of farming now and business is spread over the whole country. I must make my living — our living — not as a Thetford farmer raising crops 230 Extracts from Librettos for my own use or the local market but as an American farmer raising crops for the general market, wherever it is. Business has become everything, because business men have got together. Farmers must get together, and I must learn how to do things that way. Lettie Davis: All right. Why not begin at home, Joe? Joe Edwards: What's the use? No one here would listen to me? And why should they? No more will they take the lead. They are all content to scrape along. When it comes to doing anything, they wait a while first and then sit back and say they can't, like father. Lettie Davis: Joe — Joe Edwards: The only way is for me to go and prove to them that I am right, that I can—. Oh if I could only have them! Now I must go alone! It is true, what they say, that there is danger in the city for a fellow like me. There is. There is danger everywhere. They love me but they do not be- lieve in me! They do not believe in me because I am their son, because I am a Thetford boy. If I came from anywhere else,— if I were anyone else's son,— I might have a chance— but— it is all wrong! It takes the heart out of me. They ought to back me up— me, me\ Then I could go and win! Or stay and win, if it were a matter of staying! {Lettie looks at him shocked at his outburst.) Joe Edzvards: I know they love me; you need not look at me like that. I know it better than you do. I want someone to believe in me, if it's only one! Let them hate me, but believe in me! Lettie Davis: Oh don't, don't say that, Joe! {She protests with an almost understanding tenderness.) Joe Edwards: (He starts away from her and turns back impulsively to her, holding both hands out to her); Don't you believe m me, Lettie? {She thinks he is changing his mind or that he may change it and stay at home; she is happy in the hope, comes up close to him and takes his hands and looks up into his face affectionately and appeal- ingly.) 231 A Handbook of American Pageantry Lettie Davis: Why do you go? {He looks quietly into her eyes a moment.) Joe Edwards: Because I must. {The f-ather and mother have been talking together and watching the young people, though not hearing what they said. Joe returns to the team, climbs up on the load and silently starts the oxen up to drive them off. Lettie goes over and joins Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.) George Edwards: Well, mother, I reckon he's gone. {They go out, Joe driving the load of hay, the father and mother and Lettie walking beside it. As they go, the Spirit of Thetford appears stretching out her arms in compassion to them.) 232 a 03 z M >^ . o; •' o : Q z < a: f- . Z O o z o - oz OS o ' z ' >?• 2 < 5: » ca < H z ^ ii HOMK. l-ROM IHK i'ai;l^ant. "sancho panza" takicn bv vcunc; iady at mount hol.yokk coi.i.f.gk PAGEANT OF PATRIOTISM, TAUNTON, MASS. EPISODE III. Scene I — Court of King George III. Principals— King George, Queen Charlotte, Pitt, Gen. Gage, Archbishop of Canterbury, Benjamin Franklin, courtiers, ladies, soldiers. Flourish of trumpets— halberdiers enter and take place by throne. To music of court proces- sional, King and Queen enter preceded by flower girls and dwarf jester, capering. Company of courtiers follow nodding to each other in dumb conversation. As soon as King and Queen are seated on throne tune of "British Grenadiers" is heard, and enter Gen. Gage with redcoats, who take position before throne. Pitt: Most Exalted Majesty! It has pleased your gracious Highness to summon before you, our honored and valiant officer in the royal service, Thomas Gage. He awaits your Majesty's pleas- ure. (King bows. Gage salutes with sword). King: Our trusted and most loyal officer is welcome. (To Gage.) You have rendered honorable and distinguished service for the mighty kingdom of Great Britain. (Handing document.) Herewith do I appoint you Governor of the royal province of Massachusetts Bay, to preserve order and suppress all violence against the crown officials and our sovereign will. Gage: Wherever your Majesty's laws are in danger, there will the loyal soldier most firmly grapple with the foe. King: America must be preserved to the British Empire even at the point of the sword. Franklin: Most Gracious Sovereign, I humbly beg to intercede in behalf of the province of Massa- 235 A Handbook of American Pageantry chusetts Bay. I cannot believe your Majesty fully understands the true spirit of the American people. There are no more loyal subjects in the world than these same colonists who are striving for the common rights of Englishmen beyond the seas. I pray that you will refrain from that co- ercion which may lead to the loss of your fair province. The fiery serpent of independence is already hissing "Don't tread on me." Queen (blandly and innocently): Do Americans still wear feathers in their hair?" (Much laughter). Franklin (laughing heartily): Ah, no, most gracious Sovereign. I am afraid the Yankees have used all their feathers to mix with tar to decorate the obnoxious crown officials. Pitt: If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign army was landed on my shores, I never would give up my rights. Never! Never!! Never!!! Gage (astonished) : Your defense of rebels in the royal presence is most ill-timed, my lord. Unless the American provincials submit to Parliament, I will stir the Yankee blood (gesticulating) as a barmaid stirs the toddy. Franklin: The more you stir the Yankee blood, the warmer it will burn for liberty. (Bowing himself out). Archbishop (restoring calm) : Let peace resign here within this sacred court. (To Gage) : Our blessing and good wishes go with you on your brave expedition. (Gage gives order to march. Troops exit.) Queen (rising): Let us close the day with music and a stately minuet {music). 236 / UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Fine schedule: 25 cents on first day overdue 50 cents on fourth day overdue One dollar on seventh day overdue. APR 30 1C47 APR 30 1S47 AUG 41983 SAN DIEGO iNTERLlBRARY Received in Int^rl mo DISC NOV 4 1987 OCT 3 2006 DEC 1 2 ^00^ lom hrprv loan .SFP2 ' 1983 OCT 26 1388 ii(i iood LD 21-100ml2.'46(A20128l6)4120 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDDm23Dlfl / ^D 03838 304276 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY 0^ i!|i)i!ijii;ii;