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I V
V V
for March 9,1923
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The Art of Modern Necromancy
(By Bion H. Butler)
THE opening of the Pinehurst theater was an event in the
Sandhills. The crowd could not be accommodated, and
many were turned away, although room for almost eight
hundred people had been provided. Seats were in demand as soon
as the tickets were on sale, and everything was sold out long in
advance of the play.
This is not such an unusual thing, for many other theaters have
sold out the house. But never in my recollection have I known a
theater of this character in a vilage remote from centers of popula
tion, to sell out a house as big as this with the same type of attrac
tion, and to an audience of the substantial quality as this. Forty
years ago in a lumber town in Pennsylvania a wealthy mill man
built in the third story of a large brick structure a right complete
theater. It was in the air, and the state later condemned it as
dangerous, but when it was opened Lawrence Barrett was the star
who dedicated the institution. Jefferson, Lotta, Minnie Maddern
before she became Minnie Maddern Fiske, and others of that grade,
were among the attractions, but the patrons of the house were
unique. We came to the theater in top boots and mackinaws, woods
men with spikes in their heels, town folks with their long tailed
coats, and the crowd told Barrett that his Richelieu was no good,
and one night guyed Roland Reed because his humor was not full
enough of ginger. After the show was over it was learned that
when he went on the stage he just heard of the death of one of his
family, and the remorse that followed that crowd was acute. Roland
Reed came that way a couple of times again before the theater was
discontinued and a properly conscious people would laugh if he
had recited a threnody on the death of the most prominent citizen
of the town, so intent were they on making amends for their
previous offense.
But here is a magnificent theater, out in the country, yet filled with
an audience of the highest character, with equipment of the most
modern kind, one of the best moving picture outfits obtainable, one
of the best pipe organs in the South, the building a fine example
of the architect's skill and the builder's work, the furnishing of the
house immaculate all the way through, and the program covering a
variety that included almost everything, and put on by masters, in
every line. The living fashion plate, the organ recital, the picture
show, the solos, the whole bill, handled by those capable of a place
before any audience, and with the audience including a fair propor
tion of spectators who are familiar with the best that is presented
on any American stage.
Well, it was not from the theatrical viewpoint that the thing
impressed me, but rather on the basis that here in the Sandhills,
miles away from any populous community, the people have access
to the best that is to be found any place. The world is getting
mighty small under the influences of modern necromancy. In my
house is a boy now grown to above six feet who used to pester the
life out of me in the effort to work me for a story before he would
go to bed as his mother told him to do. And I had a few features
that gave some novelty to the stories that served. One of them was
a distance compressor, by means of which we moved New York
up to the side of San Francisco, and set the moon over on the lot
alongside of the house across the road any time it was desired, and
in that way we could flit about from place to place without much
effort, for we simply moved the place up to the horse block and got
on. That scheme sounded novel then. But the railroad and the
automobile, and the telephone and the radio, and various other
agencies have compressed distance now to where anybody can go
any place just by sitting still and letting any place come up. Last
night I heard a negro quartette sing at the Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama, and by turning a knob a little a man was talking to a
banker's gathering in Boston. Distance compressed by the radio,
(Continued on page 13)
Early
Reservations
Suggested I
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Care Hotel, Jackson Springs, N. C.
H
ERE'S your opportunity to own a Southern home artistic
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150 acres bearing peaches.
Firleigh Farms' home place, located one mile north of Southern
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for $50,000.00.
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For particulars and further information, address
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Southern Pines, North Carolina