Ear: Astorian

From the Jan. 5, 1882 edition of The Daily Astorian:

• “Our Boarding House” tonight … at Liberty Hall … You want to see Sheridan as Fiorette.

Note: The farce/melodrama, a popular production, opened on Broadway on Jan. 20, 1877, and later toured the country. Famous stage actor William E. Sheridan was probably best known for playing Fiorette.

Also starring was Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth. In an ironic twist or two, Edwin Booth not only saved Lincoln’s son from being hit by an oncoming train in New Jersey, but he also voted for Lincoln. Booth’s portrait is by Oliver Ingraham Lay.

• A few more chances yet to be taken for that fine graphoscope at the City Book Store.

Note: This would have been a big deal. The device enhanced viewing of photos and text and was sometimes combined with a stereoscope. The popular Holmes stereoscope, invented by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1861, was a hand-held viewer and stand to hold a card which contained two copies of the same image — a modern comparison would be the View-Master toy. Pictured, courtesy of Bonhams, a tabletop stereo graphoscope.

• A California minstrel, recently employed in a lucrative engagement, failing to act in his usual hilarious manner, gives as his reason that he had lost in real-estate ventures. The manager now brings suit that his troubadour be funny by order of the court, or show cause why his engagement should not be canceled.