A Merrymaking Party That Carried Matters Too Far in the Theatre.

About seventy-five members of the Ariel Bowling Club attended the performance at the Academy of Music at Baltimore, Dec. 8, where Pauline Hall and Richard Golden appeared in the "Honeymoon."

Some of the young men had imbibed rather freely in anticipation of the good time that was to follow the show, when the club banquet was to be attended by Miss Hall and the rest of the company. The front seats of the orchestra circle had been reserved for the clubmen, and the performers and the Ariels prepared to have a jolly time with the various bon mots and jokes that were to pass between the actors and the audience.

The hilarious clubmen went a little too far, and then there was trouble. They started in by guying all hands, interrupting the performers, and then started to shying sandwiches, with which they were provided, on the stage. Another crowd would throw a rag baby attached to a string at the performers and then jerk it away.

Finally Mr. Golden grew angry, and walking down to the footlights, said that the behavior was offensive, and that there were others in the theatre besides the clubmen. Miss Hall stepped from the wings to applaud this speech. This made the clubmen angrier.

They kept silence when either Miss Hall or Golden appeared, but applauded uproariously whenever others of the company were on the stage. One of the men insisted on pushing $20 bills on the head of his cane at the chorus girls. This, of course, broke up the arrangements for the evening. The Ariels held the banquet, but the "Honeymooners" did not join in the festivities.

Illustrated Police News, December 23,1893.

Reprinted from Puck on Wheels, Summer 1886.