Black Crook

“Can we call the Black Crook the century plant of Niblo’s Garden? Its antiquity might entitle it to the name, for the memory of the oldest inhabitant runneth not back to the date when it first bloomed. But a century plant blooms only once in a hundred years, and the Black Crook has bloomed every night for hundreds of nights. Last night it bloomed with as great splendor and attracted as many spectators as usual. The public seems to have been spellbound by these combined fascinations of the spectacle and ballet, and we discover no signs as yet that it would not throng to see the Black Crook nightly for the next hundred years, if some magic could prevent all the performers, from the graceful Marie Bonfanti and the dashing Louise Billon to La Petite Ravel, including the corps de ballet and the garde imperial, from growing an hour older. A century could not make the back of Herzog, the Black Crook, more crooked than it looks now. This marvelously successful piece would indefinitely retain possession of the stage if it were not written that the Biche au Bois and the Forty Thieves are to unite their attractions and eclipse it in January.”

Discusses the influence of The Herald, says “It continues to control all events, great and small, to shape the destiny of nations and of parties, to build up public men or knock them down, and to regulate all matters, from the heavenly display of a meteoric shower down to the devil’s display of the ‘Black Crook.’”