Black Crook

“A new ballet will be introduced tomorrow night.”

“Last nights.”

“After the unparalleled run of sixteen consecutive months, with audiences amounting in the aggregate to one million five hundred thousand persons, the ‘Black Crook,’ according to the proclamation of the management, will have to be withdrawn, in consequence of other engagements entered into many months ago.  The ‘Crook’ is, therefore, now undergoing the last nights of its representation; but whether the last six or twelve or twenty-four we cannot say. It would, perha0s, be safest for those who have not yet seen its wonderful fascinations of pretty women in scanty drapery and its splendid tableaux and pictorial effects, to take it for granted that at the end of a week or so the Black Crook will straighten himself up and retire to his castle by the sea, rich as an East India nabob. Well, preachers may preach, and pious old Puritans may roll up their eyes; but human nature cried out, ‘Avaunt! The “Black Crook” is better than a parson’s sermon; for it shows me angels and devils as natural as life, and teaches me that while virtue is its own reward, the devil, in the long run, gets his own[’].”