Mr. Knapp’s Scheme.
Reading edition
Mr. Thomas J. Knapp, manager of the Elgin Opera-House, returned home last evening very much disgusted. He had been in Chicago a week, trying to arrange for one night of Bernhardt in Elgin.
“Our town,” says he, “is the best one-night stand in Illinois. Our watch-factory employs ten thousand hands, and we have the best society in the West. It would pay this French woman to stop over a night with us.”
“Why doesn’t she?”
“The manager wants a guaranty of five thousand dollars,” says Mr. Knapp, “and I wouldn’t give it. I was willing to raise the price of seats to seventy-five cents, and we would have packed the house! But Bernhardt wants the earth,—or at least her manager does. You see, her expenses would be light,—virtually nothing. In the first place, she wouldn’t have had any hotel-bill to pay.”
“No hotel-bill? Why, how’s that?”
“No, none at all: I had made all the arrangements to have her stop with the minister.”
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