Lincoln Day Entertainments: Recitations, Plays, Dialogues, Drills, Tableaux, Pantomimes, Quotations, Songs, Tributes, Stories, Facts
General
Lincoln Day Entertainments: Recitations, Plays, Dialogues, Drills, Tableaux, Pantomimes, Quotations, Songs, Tributes, Stories, Facts
Lincoln Day; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Anecdotes; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Anniversaries, etc.
As third stanza is begun the mother and boys pass off and a young
colored lady, gaily and gaudily dressed in bright colors, with a large,
"much-trimmed" hat, comes on and stands at back of stage. She gazes
off to side of stage and a young man, dressed about like one who does
the acting, comes on carrying a banjo. She goes to meet him, they walk
back to center of back, she sits on a stump of wood (or something to
give an outdoor effect), and he sits at her feet and pretends to play
the banjo. During the singing of this stanza the impersonator stands as
before, at side of stage, but as chorus begins he comes toward center
of front and acts as during second singing of chorus. The mother and
two boys come back on and stand, tableau effect, beside the girl and
boy with the banjo.
The Blue and the Gray
Hang back of stage with black cloth and fasten on wall, staffs crossed,
two good-sized flags. A few feet from the back, with about four feet
aisle between them, arrange two graves by using small boxes covered
with dark cloth for the mounds and nailing at the head of each a white
board for a stone. If it is not desired to have the words sung they
may be recited by someone at side of stage. A girl dressed as a woman,
all in black, comes on slowly, passes across back of stage from left
to right, down right side, up to aisle between two mounds and kneels
beside one of them as the stanza is read:
"By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray."
She rises and from a small basket which she carries she places a
bouquet on the mound by which she knelt, then turns and places one on
the other mound as the words are read:
"From the silence of sorrowful hours,
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers,
Alike for the friend and the foe;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray."
As stanza is finished she passes to back and stands by flags. Six girls
in white, each carrying a small basket of flowers, march on at left
back, pass to center, then down aisle between mounds to front; three
turn to each side, pass around and stand in two lines of three each,
one line on outside of each mound, both lines facing center, while
stanza is read:
"So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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