on the old plane. "Variety" was the name--in England vaudeville
is still called "variety"--that it held even more widely then.
And in the later seventies and the early eighties "variety" was
on the ebb-tide. It was classed even lower than the circus, from
which many of its recruits were drawn.

Among the men who came to vaudeville's rescue, because they saw
that to appear to the masses profitably, vaudeville must be clean,
were F. F. Proctor in Philadelphia, and B. F. Keith in Boston.
On Washington Street in Boston, B. F. Keith had opened a "store
show." The room was very small and he had but a tiny stage; still
he showed a collection of curiosities, among which were a two-headed
calf and a fat woman. Later on he added a singer and a serio-comic
comedian and insisted that they eliminate from their acts everything
that might offend the most fastidious. The result was that he
moved to larger quarters and ten months later to still more
commodious premised.

Continuous vaudeville--"eleven o'clock in the morning until eleven
at night"--had its birth on July 6, 1885. It struck the popular
fancy immediately and soon there was hardly a city of any importance
that did not possess its "continuous" house. From the "continuous"
vaudeville has developed the two-performances-a-day policy, for
which vaudeville is now so well known.

The vaudeville entertainment of this generation is, however, a
vastly different entertainment from that of even the nineties.
What it has become in popular affection it owes not only to Tony
Pastor, F. F. Proctor, or even to B. F. Keith--great as was his
influence--but to a host of showmen whose names and activities