Nikola Tesla Articles
Strollers Met and Roistered
“Twelfth Night” Played at Browne’s Cafe.
FOUR TABLES WERE FILLED
Club Members Appeared as “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” Between the Other Acts.
The disturbance in upper Broadway this morning was caused by the Twelfth Royster of the Strollers Club at Browne’s chop house. It began about 1 o’clock, and lasted until exhausted.
The affair was a cross between an east side political convention and a meeting of the Paterson Anarchists. The programme was drinks interspersed with efforts by actors from the various theatres and a play written by W. S. Gilbert. It wore the title of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.” The author calls it a tragic episode in three tableaux. It was.
All the players were amateurs, J. Cheever Goodwin being the star of the production. As an actor he is a wonder, and what a satisfaction it would have been to hundred of members of “the profession” whom he has accused of murdering his lines if they could have seen him as the librettist who acts.
As it was a tableau production, most of the players became ossified so they could do the work properly.
Score to Move Them.
It took a score of waiters to move them. As tableau artists, they are dreams of perfection.
Senator Chauncey Depew and Bourke Cockran was expected, but they were busy making political speeches and could not come. But W. K. Vanderbilt, Sr., was there and made a speech.
The Strollers had four tables. At the first each man could buy a drink for himself only. At the second the last man to take a seat had to buy. The rules governing the third table allowed anybody to buy. At the last one they threw dice for drinks. There was some disorder caused by the united efforts of all present to obtain seats at the first table.
Cast of the Players.
This is the cast that slumbered through “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern”:
| King Claudius of Denmark | J. Cheever Goodwin |
| Queen Gertrude | Walter Fairman Dyett |
| Hamlet (Queen Gertrude’s son, betrothed to Ophelia) | Edward Fales Coward |
| Rosencrantz (a Courtier in love with Ophelia) | Wm. Duncan Preston |
| Guildenstern (a Courtier) | Louis Fitzgerald, Jr. |
| First Player | William R. Delehanty |
| Second Player | J. Gerald Benkard |
| Ophelia | Otho Cushing |
| Courtiers, Pages, etc.. by Jennings Stockton Cox, Jr. Incidental Music by Melville Ellis. | |
After that the following appeared between drinks: Max and Gus Rogers, Eugene O’Rourke, William West, Johnny Page, Lee Harrison and Maurice Levi, of the Rogers Bros.’ Company; Francis Wilson, Van Rensselaer Wheeler, Hallen Mostyn, Al Holbrook and Signor Enrico Moreales, of the Francis Wilson Opera Company; George W. Day, Robert J. Webb, Edward Rice, Melville Ellis, Mackenzie Gordon, Jennings S. Cox, Jr., Safford Waters, John L. Golden, J. Cheever Goodwin, Edward Fales Coward, Wm. Duncan Preston, Louis Fitzgerald, Jr., Otho Cushing, W. R. Delehanty, J. Gerald Benkard, Walter Fairman Dyett and others.
Among the notables who clinked glasses with and swore eternal friendship to the Strollers were:
Belmont Tiffany, W. K. Vanderbilt, Sr., James W. Gerard, Robert Cornell Sands, Henry Brevoort Kane, Colonel Franklin Bartlett, General McCoskry Butt, Captain J. P. Benkard, Woodward Babcock, James L. P. Breeze, Nikola Tesla, James K. Hackett, Charles Richmond, B. Aymor Sands and Auguste Montant.
