A THEATRICAL WAGER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1695, 26 July 1879, Page 2

A THEATRICAL WAGER.

Mr Emm, a popular actor, recently undertook for a wager of £SO to perform in the three towns of Swansea, Cardiff, and Newport, on the same night, within a given time. A Saturday night was the evening fixed for the attempt. Mr Emm commenced at the Star Theatre, Swansea, and assumed the character of Timothy Tickle. The drama was played with extraordinary smartness, and the audience cheered Mr Emm most lustily as the curtain fell. At the High street station a number of the versatOe actor’s admirers, who wore congregated, greeted him with many cordial expressions of encouragement. At Laniore, Neath, Port Talbot, and Bridgend—at all of which places the people seemed to have heard of the intended feat—numbers of Mr Emm’s friends assembled to give him a friendly greeting en route. At Cardiff he had quite an ovation, and it was thought he would alight at the station, but the exigencies of the case did not admit of this arrangement, and Mr Emm proceeded direct to Newport, arriving there, thanks to “ Hell-fire Dick,” the driver of the mail, to the very second if not a little before. There was an enthusiastic audience assembled in the Victoria Great Hall, who received Emm with thunders of applause. He quickly rattled off the adventures of Topsail Tom, and song two comic songs. Then without waiting to change his costume he drove rapidly back to the station just in time to catch the down express, which landed him in Cardiff a few minutes after ten. The journey between the two stations afforded him ample time to change his dress, and he was thus enabled to appear on the stage at the Philharmonic Theatre, Cardiff, ready for his new part by 10.20. His reception was enormous. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved, and the cheering was repeated again and again. Mr Emm, in a few well chosen words, thanked the audience for the interest they had taken in his winning the wager. He informed them that he had travelled more than seventy-one miles, and said that though he was not equal to Sir R'iche Boyle’s bird, which could be in two plates at the same time, he had shown them that he could be and act in three places, widely apart one from the other, within the short space of four hours.