Miss Adams, a good horsewoman, determined to be better, and for more than a month she practiced every afternoon at a riding academy in New York. Since the horse had to move amid clanging armor and in all the tumult of battle, she reheursed every day with all sorts of noisy apparatus hanging about her. Shots were fired, colored banners and flags were flaunted about her, and pieces of metal were fastened to her riding skirt, so that the steed would be accustomed to the constant contact of a word.
"The Maid of Orleans" was presented on the evening of June 22, 1916, in the presence of over fifteen thousand people. A magnificent and thrilling success, it proved to be the greatest theatrical pageant ever staged in this country. The elaborate settings were handled mechanically. Forests dissolved into regal courts; fields melted into castles. A hidden orchestra played the superb music of Beethoven's "Kroica."
The first scene showed the maid of Domremy wandering in the twilight with her vision; the last revealed her dying of her wounds at the spring, soon to be buried under the shields of her captains. 