An unsuccessful attempt—following on many of—was made the other day to educate some of the very numerous people who are always late at places of entertainment. The conductor of a large orchestral concert, annoyed by the apparently unending stream of late arrivals, caused the doors to be shut until the interval. When the next contingent of belated concert-goers were informed of this decision and discovered that they would have to wait about three-quarters of an hour in the corridora, they repaired to the box-office and asked for their money back. Thus, the conductor obtained quiet, but he had to pay heavily for it. One of the boulevard theatres recently made, and soon abandoned, w similar attempt to obtain order in the house when the curtain was raised.
I do not know whether Parisians are worse than the denizens of other great cities in this respect, but there can be no doubt whatever that many of them habitually disregard punctuality at places of entertainment. Abuses of this kind can only be stopped by public spirit, and the Parisian is deterred from "manifesting" against theatre unpunctuality because he knows that he himself will be late one of these days, The Parisian entertainment-goer is, in fact, incorrigible. Even at the brilliant orchestral concerts, of which a series has just been given at the Opera, one section of the audience was constantly annoyed by people who came in noisily and took their seats while the orchestra. was playing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.