It would, as Gow Johnson said, "Let him sit back and view
the landscape o'er, before he puts his ploughshare in the mud."
There was an outdoor scene in the play produced by the impetuous
amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at
the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
towards O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The
scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three,
upon which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break,
after having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard
their kind of intentions towards himself.
The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed
a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with
distinctness, each star sharply twinkling from the electric power
behind-a pretty scene evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this
back curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in
the wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now
a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the
significance of the stars of Orion on the back curtain.
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