"The Play’s The Thing"
by
A business meeting of the Lady Hyacinths Shirt-Waist Club was in progress. The roll had been called. The twenty members were all present and the Secretary had read the minutes of the last meeting. These formalities had consumed only a few moments and the club was ready to fall upon its shirt waists. The sewing-machines were oiled and uncovered, the cutting-table was cleared, every Hyacinth had her box of sewing paraphernalia in her lap; and Miss Masters who had been half cajoled and half forced into the management of this branch of the St. Martha’s Settlement Mission was congratulating herself upon the ease and expedition with which her charges were learning to transact their affairs, when the President drew a pencil from her pompadour and rapped professionally on the table. In her daytime capacity of saleslady in a Grand Street shoe store she would have called “cash,” but as President of the Lady Hyacinths her speech was:
“If none of you goils ain’t got no more business to lay before the meetin’ a movement to adjoin is in order.”
“I move we adjoin an git to woik,” said Mamie Kidansky promptly. Only three buttonholes and the whalebones which would keep the collar well up behind the ears lay between her and the triumphant rearing of her shirt waist. Hence her zeal.
Susie Meyer was preparing to second the motion. As secretary she disapproved of much discussion. She was always threatening to resign her portfolio vowing, with some show of reason, “I never would ‘a’ joined your old Hyacinths Shirt-Waists if I’d a’ known I was goin’ to have to write down all the foolish talk you goils felt like givin’ up.”
It seemed therefore that the business meeting was closed, when a voice from the opposite side of the table broke in with:
“Say, Rosie, why can’t us goils give a play?”
“Ah Jennie, you make me tired,” protested the Secretary.
“An’ you’re out of order anyway,” was the President’s dictum.
“Where?” cried Jennie wildly, clutching her pompadour with one hand and the back of her belt with the other, “where, what’s the matter with me?”
“Go ‘way back an’ sit down,” was the Secretary’s advice, “Rosie meant you’re out of parliamentry order. We got a motion on the table an’ it’s too late for you to butt in on it. This meetin’ is goin’ to adjoin.”
But Jennie was the spokesman of a newly-born party and her supporters were not going to allow her to be silenced. Even those Lady Hyacinths who had not been admitted to earlier consultations took kindly to the suggestion when they heard it.
“I don’t care whether she’s out of order or not,” one ambitious Hyacinth declared, “I think it would be just too lovely for anything to have a play. They have ’em all the time over to Rivington Street an’ down to the Educational Alliance.”
“Rebecca Einstein,” said the Secretary darkly, “if you’re goin’ to fire off your face about plays an’ the Educational Alliances you can keep your own minnits, that’s all! Do ye think I’m goin’ to write down your foolishness? Well, I ain’t.”
Again the President plied her gavel. “Goils,” she remonstrated, “this ain’t no way to act. Say, Miss Masters,” she went on, “I guess the whole lot of us is out of order now. What would you do about it if you was me?”
“I should suggest,” Miss Masters answered, “that the motion to adjourn be carried and that the whole club go into committee on the question raised by Miss Meyer.”
“I move that we take our woik into committee with us,” cried Miss Kidansky, not to be deflected from her buttonholes. And from such humble beginnings the production of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths sprang.
Hamlet was not their first choice. It was not even their tenth and to the end it was not the unanimous choice. During the preliminary stages of the dramatic fever Miss Masters preserved that strict neutrality which marks the successful Settlement worker. She would help–oh, surely she would help–the Hyacinths, but she would not lead them. She had never questioned their taste in the shape and color of their shirt waists. Some horrid garments had resulted but to her they represented “self expression,” and as such gave her more pleasure than any servile following of her advice could have done. She soon discovered that the latitude in the shirt waist field is far exceeded by that in the dramatic and she discovered too, that the Lady Hyacinths, though they seldom visited the theatre had strong digestions where plays were concerned.