Hebrew blood in nearly all persons of genius.

The new Park Theater was looked upon as a magnificent playhouse in its
day, and it is a pity that Mr. White, writing about it when it was a
quarter of a century old, should have helped to spread the erroneous
notion that it was quite unworthy of so elegant a form of entertainment
as Garcia brought into it. It remained a fashionable house through all
its career or at least for a long time after it gave refuge to the
Italian muse, though it may not have been able to hold one of its
candles to the first house built especially to house that muse eight
years later. The barrel hoop of the first New York theater gave way
to "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having
thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it
had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting.
Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches
consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower
board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. But
one seat on each of the three or four benches was without even this
luxury, in order that the seat itself might be raised upon its hinges
for people to pass in. These sybaritic inclosures were kept under lock
and key by a fee-expecting creature, who was always half drunk, except
when he was wholly drunk. The pit, which has in our modern theater
become the parterre (or, as it is often strangely called, the parquet),
the most desirable part of the house, was in the Park Theater hardly
superior to that in which the Jacquerie of old stood upon the bare
ground (par terre), and thus gave the place its French name. The floor
was dirty and broken into holes; the seats were bare, backless benches.
Women were never seen in the pit, and, although the excellence of the
position (the best in the house) and the cheapness of admission (half a
dollar) took gentlemen there, few went there who could afford to study