KATHRYN PEARL. QUEEXIE VASSAR,In "The Ladles' Paradise," Metropolitan Opera House.)

NEW-YORK IKIIUM:ILLUSTRATED SI I'PLHMKNT.

TWO MUSICAL PIECKS. A HINDOO lIAMU'i

(PICKINGS AT DALY'S THEATRE AND

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE.

MORK KNGLISH IMPORTATIONS MISS BAR-

RYMORE'S RETURN MOST OF THE

THEATRES NOW OPEN.

Most of the city theatres will be open thisweek, and in a few days more there will be

si it-.-' any left closed. It Is the genera] opin-

ion that they are opening too early, but that is

the opinion every year, and since the custom

of early starts continues, it is to be supposed

that experience does not bear out the theory or

else thai the managers are unable to learn by

experience, In which case they are not deserving

ol much sympathy. The appearance of some ofthe houses, however, within the last two weeks

has indicated that they would be just as well

off if they were shut. The only important nov-elties to lie presented to-morrow night are twomusical pieces from England, where most musi-cal farces come from.

Daly's Theatre will open for the season with

a musical farce called "The Messenger Boy,"

which has had the usual' London run. James T.

Powers will play the title part. This theatre.-••¦ins now to be thoroughly confirmed In the

habit of beginning its period of activity with amusical work. The dramatic company of thehouse will make its appearance later.

A preliminary season of the Metropolitanopera House will be opened to-morrow night

with a musical extravaganza, also from London,

called "The Ladies' Paradise." Preparations onan elaborate scale have been going on for sometime, and the various elements of music, danceand burlesque will be mingled in the hope ofproducing an attractive whole. A ballet of con-siderable proportions is eventually to form apart of the entertainment, but it will not beready for another week at least.

The season of the Savoy Theatre willopen onThursday evening with the first performancehere if a new play called "The Red Kloof," withLouis m inn and Miss Clara Lipman in the lead-ing parts. The scene of the p]ay is South Africaand the period is that of the Jameson raid andjust before. It is said, however, that it is nota war play. Mr. Mann's part is that of a Heldcornet of Doppersdorf, and Miss Lipman's Is thatof his daughter. There are four scenes, paintedfrom photographs of the localities represented.

Miss Ethel Barrymore will return to the scene<>f her sii.iess <ti last year to-morrow evening.

and will again appear as Mmi Trent onIin"('apt:.in Jinks of t lie Horse Marines" at theGarrick Theatre. The present engagement is ex-pected to last for only three weeks!

Th. fir full week of the season ..f the Castlef-'<iuare Opera Company at the liroadway The-atre will begin to-morrow night. Alternate per-formances of "La LJoheme" and "Aid.!" will hegiven. The operas for the remainder of the sea-son are announced as follows: Week of Sep-tember S'.. "IITrovatore" and "Martha"; Sep-tember,!!!), "Carmen" and '-'Lohengrin*; October7. ¦ i'a-. Llleria R'ustlcana" and "1 I*agllaccl"and'•"Faust"; October I}.

'The Bohemian Gli l*

*and

"La Gioconda," and October -\. "The Mikado"and "Tannhilus< i

JAMES T. POWERSIn "The Messenger Hoy." Imlj'.sTheatre.

ir-- quite proud of the old fell »w*s eccentricities,

and feel that they give our neighborhood a cer-tain distinction. Crasy? Oh, very likely. Hutthere may really be such a law somewhere, al-though our old Abraham is the last lingeringobserver it" it."

1 i." EEITB ARM S.OM ¥EARB OLD.Pi 'iin Sclent •¦ Siftings.

Exploration has now revealed relics of Menes,rhe founder of Egyptian monarchy, fashionedni"!.- than sixty-five hundred years ago. CM/•er. the su cessor to Menes, it is astonishingto find the forearm ••!" bis queen still in itswrappings, with four splendid bracelets intactThis brilliant arid exquisitely finished group ofjewelry is two thousand years older than th>>.j.w.]r> of Dahshur, the oldest up to then

The inn of the gui -n bad b •• -noff l. the first plunderers, and had lain hiddenin a hi !•• In the wall of thi tomb.

TOO LATE FOR Hl't.L'l / v

From The Chicago Tribune.Tired of life and the ever present necessity of

earning his daily bread by working, he hadtaken a dose of carbolic acid and lain down todie.

Bui the meddlesome doctors pumped him outand saved him to society.

"O, Horace!'.! moaned his wife, leaning overhim, "why did you take that awful stuff?Laudanum would have been less painful andso much surer!"

THE ACTOR HAS BEEN OP.LIGED "TOINTRODUCE A VEIN OF LIGHT

COMEDI" RUNNING RIGHTthrough" Till:play.

From The Tatler.When Edmund Russell, an American actor

who had been playing Shakespeare in Bombayrecently, suggested that Ishould witness withhim a performance of "Hamlet" In Hindustani Iconfess that Iwas taken aback. My surprisewas increased when Ilearned thai Shakespearehas had his public, an enthusiastic public,among native Indians for nearly a quartet of acentury. ¦ •

The earliest of his plays to be translated was"AComedy of Errors," followed in rapid succes-sion by "Romeo and Juliet,

'"Pericles." •"The

Winter's Tale," "Othello," "Hamlet, •TwelfthNight" and "The Merchant of Venice."

Strange to say, in India as in England, "Ham-let" is the most popular the safest revival.Kavasgi Pallnnji Khatao, the Indian Hamletwhose show Iwitnessed, .tells me that duringthe last t*-vo years be has given this play overir»i» times, and that In Bombay it had rearhedthe unheard of run of fifty-six consecutivenights.

Th»» Parsed have been the initiators, thetranslators, and, as far as the male charactersare concerned, the exponents of these Snakes-pearian adaptations, In fact, until Mr.Russellarrived in India a few months ago. they had re-ceived no hint or assistance from any whiteman. Their audiences, too, have been exclu-sively native. The mate characters are taken"by Hindoo boys.

In criticising a foreign, and especially an Ori-ental, rendering: of a Shakespearian play onemust make very material allowances for alt-redcircumstances. When we bear in mind thatevery European exponent of Hamlet, with theexception of Benson, has rr:utii:tt~«l the "book"to .it himself and his audience, it would beungenerous to carp at our Parsve friends forhaving taken liberties with the. test whenstudying the requirements a rKitive Iniiiinpublic.

Drastic, Indeed, are the changes that r.»vebeen made, but they have been effected skilfullyand with dramatic intelligence*. Although theorder of the scenes has :>een ruthlessly changedand the blue pencil baa o^en u>-e-.l unsparingly,the Shakespearian then is plain throughout,and the Englishman who knows no word of Hin-dustani cannot fail to fotlovr the play. The Mostobvious and Important omissions are the gr-.ivi-—diggers' scene and that ••' tile burial of Ophelia.These, as Mr. K. P. K. (for Icannot trust my-self t.> spell bis name ¦> setond time) explainedto me, could not be performed in ! Ha, for thedesecration of tombs would amoont to such anact nt blasphemy in the eyes ;>f the pious Hir>fioDthat th»» audience " uld rise and wre»"k thetheatre in which such atrocities were counter-feited."

'Hamlet' as it was written." saiij Mr. K. P.K. I.i me, "would be too heavy for our audi-ences, and ther-N.re." h-- added :M apologeti-cally, "v have been obliged to introduce a veinof light comedy running right through it." Andso they had.

Hamlet, the Queen, the Kins. Polonius andHoratio are sufficiently Shakespearian, and theGhost is as much "a goblin damned" a.- hisBritish prototype; but the other characters uremixed indeed. There are j>e.>j,ie who maintainthat Sarah P.ernhardt's woman Hamlet was adaring performance, but it was merely a modestexploit in <ompnris«»n with the Hindoo manOphelia. The Indian Ophelia is a giddy youngthing several inches taller than any man <>nthe stage. All arms and legs, and especiallyfeet and hands, she is clothed in a single gar-ment, which. Ithink, may best i•• describe 1!asa sort tif close tittingspangled chemise withoutlace. Shakespeare's heroine is not quite livelyenough t"->r the Hindoos, so they have given her;v second lover and half a dozen sprightly littlehandmaidens, with whom at frequent Intervalsshe indulges in song and dance to a species of¦Pelle Fatma" accompaniment.

The Indian title of the play is "Khoon

teriously <ntin-l She was lost In aroaxementwhen h'-r fi lend came In.

"Iy"k h< re!" Bhe cried, "whit sort of religious

old burglar lives In this neighborh I? An oldman with side lo« ks has been jumping out ofskylights lik.-a patriarchal Jack-in-the-box forhalf an hour."

"What, Just opposite?" inquired the friend."That's no burglar. That Is lhe only truly r--li^i"tis Jew in America. He says so himself,and be must know "

'He has a curious -say of taking exercise,"

Itl t •.!'.-¦ r\¦iof ihe religious

H< '¦•

The ex| i mpi i >ugh There is.1 law. i¦.'• a t :.i

' ' • >r. 1 don'l. ¦¦ that irr.tr:

xhall not |¦ .• i [Abraham

• hat Is the i.I fellow, but

norm-tin • a th»'y forget, oi ranK*'rs standd ">r. bo that when I nl . ¦ do .'. n intothe Btreel lhe way . blocked II"may notspeak to them rl of the superstition.So he • ip to the roof and :i intothe next house It' the door . o ipied by,\ ¦ ¦!!!• n thei It very likely is at thislime "f the year, be tri a thii 1 house. We

i/./•/ \ / via mi:i\<; ix />>/. \ sr.

Till: QUEER ANTICS OF A POOH OLDSUPERSTITIOUS JEW.

A visitor from uptown sat in a fifth storyt•ri.-ni.-tit in K.ssf.\-.st., and looker] idlyout of thewindow while she waited for her friend. Belowwere the usual summer sights of Essex-st., thewomen silting on the stops and the childrenplaying in the mud puddles. The tall tenementopposite di played the customary assortment ofarticles tin the fin escapes bedding and demi-johns of homemade wine and bottles of seltzer,

it was. all so familiar that the waiter was ratherbored, and wished that her friend would hurry.Just then the monotony of the prospect wasvaried by the apparition of an old man pain-fully struggling through the skylight onto thelout" of the building opposite, lie was a ven-erable old soul, and the locks <<( hair over hisears were worn long, Indicating that be was ofa conservative and religious disposition. Hewriggled through with some difficulty,and made

bis careful way over the roof to the adjoining

bouse. There he Bought the skylight similar tothe one which had just given him escape from

the fust tenement, and let himself down out ofsight. This rather unusual proceeding arousedthe curiosity of the watcher. He displayed noneof the. eager haste that might be supposed tocharacterize the evildoer escaping from justice,

and his appearance indicated nothing worsethan a lack of care In matters of dress.

She waited for him to appear at the door ofthe house Into which he had plunged, but hewas not to be seen. In ten minutes an un-kempt head peeped over the skylight again, andthe old man, his temper evidently much theworse for wear, showed himself once more.More slowly than ever he crept out, walkedover the roof to the house on the other side ofthe tenement from that on which he had fustappeared, and lowered himself Into a third bole.In due course the astonished observer of theseantics saw him leave the house ho bad so mys-

v