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Globe, Volume I, Issue 90, 14 September 1874, Page 3

Thomas Brown was employed at the Bank Theatre a few years ago as a kind of utility man, and one night the manager put him behind the scene at the rear of the stage to take care of the moon. Brown had a dandle on the end of a long pole, and it was his duty to hold the light behind the moon, which was merely a round, unpainted space in the curtain, and to pull the curtain slowly up to represent the rising of the moon. Brown seated himself on a piece of baronial castk-, and wiiile waiting for the order to go to work he fell asleep. Presently the tragedian on the stage said to the heroine, ' Swear by yon bright moon,' &c, and turned to point to it, but the orb was not there. The stage manager flew around and gave Brown a kick, and in a frenzy ordered him to ' h'ist that moon quick 1' Brown was bewildered, and without waiting for further orders, he ran the curtain clear up with one jerk, when the cord broke, and down it came again. Another string was hurriedly rigged on the pulley, and the moon began to rise properly ; but Brown's nerves were so unstrung by fright that he couldn't hold the caudle steadily behind it, so that there were 15 or 20 eclipses during the ascent, the light meanwhile wandering all over the curtain, to the infinite amusement of the audience. However, the luminary got safely up at last, and the tragedian again observed, " Swear by yon bright moon;" but before the words were fairly out the cord snapped again, thecurtain unrolled with velocity, and broke loose from the roller, revealing Brown, the lunar elevator, roaming round in his shirt sleeves with a candle on a stick. A moment later the manager was fumbling among his hair, aud that very night Mr Brown clos-.d his theatrical career. The manager remarked to a confidential friend that while a man •vho was capable of making the same moon rise three times in one niyht, and of getting np any number of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena, might be valuable for some purposes, he was about as fit for a theatre as a wall-eyed mule was for singing hymns.