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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1685, 15 June 1904, Page 7

A tourist lias been killed on the Greiskugel, near Innsbruck, through being overtaken by an avalanche, and another man is missing.

Mr Stephen Fiske writes as follows in answer to an attack on the stage by tlie “New York Tribune”: In 1854-, fifty years ago, the theatrical bill of fare for New York was: “John Bull” and “High Life Below Stairs” at Wallack’s; “Masks and Faces’’ at Burton’s; “The Cataract of the Ganges’* at the Broadway; “The Hunchback,” by the Boone children, at the Bowefy; “Writing on tlie Wall” at the New Bowery; “The Hot Corn Girl” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” at the National; “Robinson Crusoe” at Barnum’s Museum. There were also Julien concerts, Buckley’s Negro minstrels, the Siamese Twins, a small circus, and a panorama —twelve entertainments in all, to be compared with the 45 now given. Ihree or four years later Mrs John Hoey still wore her 2500d01. diamond earrings when impersonating poor, starving work 'girls; Lester Wallack played Charles Surface with black side whiskers and a moustache; Burton stuck his face through a hole in the wall to excite tlie mirth of the gallery boys; Eddy 'chewel up’ the scenery on the Bowery; and Barnum presented more moral dramas in his ‘lecture-room.’ To compare the theatricals of that period with those of the present, when we have most of the best actors and plays of London. Paris, and Berlin to reinforce the wonderfully developed, cultured, and artistic stage of America, and when the old-time vulgarities and indecencies before and behind tlie curtain are forever banished, is like comparing twilisrht to sunshine.