It was Saturday night on the North Side, and shortly after six o'clock. That part of the world that centres in North Clark Street between Lincoln Park and the Bridge was already beginning to stir and stretch and shake off the dust of the day; was swarming in from scores of cross streets, to parade before the show-windows and pour into the beer-gardens and restaurants, to crowd at the corners--a motley company of washed and unwashed; of labourers and shopgirls hurrying home, and of more fortunate ones, old and young, sauntering from home, to get out of life what North Clark Street had to offer. Strains of dance music floated out over board fences that were gaudy with posters, out over evergreen hedges that thrived in green tubs. All the world was gay to-night; all the world was in the mood to sit at white tables under the trees and dine on the best of German fare, to tip back and listen to German music from German orchestras, to toss the waiter half a dollar; life was gay, life was jolly; all was well with the world. No half-lights here, no miserly crouching in shadows, no gloomy ones to spoil it all; nothing but froth on the glass, a laugh on the lip, and here's looking at you! But think again. Of all these houses of amusement was there not one standing empty--was there not one where gloom reigned? Glance along the street, pass the policeman on the corner--the fat policeman, for whose sake we will hope all thieves are slow of foot--down past other corners and other fat policemen, down almost to the river, so near that the smell of the water poisons the air. Was there not a dingy little playhouse, overwhelmed by the soot and grime of the city, by the noise of the trains that seemed to be rushing into the building with bells ringing and every steam-valve open--overwhelmed, too, by the rattle and struggle of the street, and the large buildings that crowded so close on each side that they threatened to come together with a snap and leave no trace of the dingy little structure with its _porte cochere_ front. If there was, anywhere in this big city, a building that spoke of failure, of pitiful inadequacy for any metropolitan purpose, of aimlessness and inevitable wreckage, here it stood, bearing the hesitating announcement that within might be found Somebody's Original Oriental Burlesquers and Refined Vaudeville.