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In 1898 Barton’s Theatre and Concert Hall was a nightly scene of revelry, by cavalry, artillery, and infantry, and from a spectator’s point of view it was hard to decide which was of more interest, the scenes in front or in rear of the footlights. Songs that reached a soldier’s heart were sung by dashing “prima donnas from the cottonfields of Dixie,” the soldiers joining in the chorus. After the “ghost had walked” this particular concert hall fell into the hands of the boys, among whom was found talent far surpassing anything behind the footlights. The soubrettes of the ballet dance mingled with the boys, and these scenes were equivalent to the “Can Can” of the famous “Red Mill” of Paris, or a Creole “Bal Masque” during a New Orleans “Mardi Gras.”

As the orchestra struck up the music to “For he is only a Soldier Boy,” a dashing southern beauty, in military costume, would saunter to the footlights, accompanied by a chorus of lesser lights, whose evolutions, combined with their singing, were extremely pretty and inspiring to the soldiers. This sketch brought forth deafening applause, dying out only as a trooper announced that he would endeavor to recite “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” or perhaps “Tam O’Shanter,” while another would volunteer to inflict us with “Casey at the Bat” or “The Face upon the Bar-room Floor,” to the mournful strains from the dirge of Imogen, a sure harbinger for the dispensers of “sangaree” to get busy and take orders. Another song, and the dance was on once more and continued until the “dog watch” of the night, when the soldiers realized that at reveille every man must be in ranks to answer to the call of his name or suffer the alternative, a berth in the “brig.”