Popular.com

New York City, December 22, 1878.

The Christmas Panam is the feature par excellence of a London theater season.

From time immemorial, the children look forward to it with an ardor of expectation that their seniors

do not disdain to share, even if in a slighter degree.

And no wonder, it is for them a peep into Fairyland, a glimpse of the wonder-world,

into the inner mysteries of whose splendors but few of them, even in their later years,

managed to pry. Next week's performance at the Academy of Music's

Around the World in 80 Days

will be more than a substitute for the somewhat insane,

if gorgeous revelry of a Christmas panamine.

Instead of the pure-oile buffoonery of the clown and the harlequin or the tiresome

preliminary drivel of the usual opening, we are to have a coherent, if somewhat improbable,

series of such scenes and incidents as befall the observations of a mundane traveler.

Mr. Phineas Fogg's solemn and stolid effort to win his wager,

and the tireless but misdirected energy of Detective Fix, the humor and cunning of Pasaparte,

these are the varied characteristics which the play unfolds.

The elephant gypsy, who will have a conspicuous share in the performance, is a splendid

young creature of twenty-five years and weighs about six thousand pounds.

She has been in the possession of Barnum since she was three feet high and has grown five feet since.

She is docile and intelligent and has been taught lots of clever tricks. Mr. Schull, her keeper,

maintaining that she is capable of at least 26. The 27th is one which the management regard with considerable disfavor,

...