Ten American Girls from HistorySweetser, Kate Dickinson
History
Ten American Girls from History
Sweetser, Kate Dickinson
United States -- Biography; Women -- Biography
"I was always on hand when a storm had to be worked," she says, "and
would grind away with a will at a crank that, turning against a tight
band of silk, made the sound of a tremendously shrieking wind. And no
one sitting in front of the house, looking at a white-robed woman
ascending to heaven, apparently floating upward through the blue
clouds, enjoyed the spectacle more than I enjoyed looking at the
ascent from the rear, where I could see the tiny iron support for her
feet, the rod at her back with the belt holding her securely about the
waist, and the men hoisting her through the air, with a painted,
sometimes moving sky behind her.
"This reminds me," says Miss Morris, "that Mrs. Bradshaw had several
times to go to heaven (dramatically speaking), and as her figure and
weight made the support useless, she always went to heaven on the
entire gallery, as it is called, a long platform the whole width of
the stage, which is raised and lowered by windlass. The enormous
affair would be cleaned and hung about with nice white clouds, and
then Mrs. Bradshaw, draped in long white robes, with hands meekly
crossed upon her breast and eyes piously uplifted, would rise
heavenward, slowly, as so heavy an angel should. But alas! There was
one drawback to this otherwise perfect ascension. Never, so long as
the theater stood, could that windlass be made to work silently. It
always moved up or down to a succession of screaks, unoilable,
blood-curdling, that were intensified by Mrs. Bradshaw's weight, so
that she ascended to the blue tarletan heaven accompanied by such
chugs and long-drawn yowlings as suggested a trip to the infernal
regions. Her face remained calm and unmoved, but now and then an
agonized moan escaped her, lest even the orchestra's effort to cover
up the support's protesting cries should prove useless. Poor woman,
when she had been lowered again to _terra firma_ and stepped off, the
whole paint frame would give a kind of joyous upward spring. She
noticed it, and one evening looked back and said; 'Oh, you're not one
bit more glad than I am, you screaking wretch!'"
Having successfully existed through the Columbus season, in the spring
the company was again in Cleveland, playing for a few weeks before
disbanding for that horror of all theatrical persons--the summer
vacation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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