The performance is "Othello," the time 10:50, the theater half filled. THE MIDDLE-AGED LADY GIVING A [To companion at her right, Then I got furious. I said to her: apropos, and the quotations keep coming in when you least expect them. It's all so elevated and -er-stimulat ing. I just hang on every And all those aggravating details coming on top of my nervous headache and an incompetent butler! But I told James what we expected of him. I did n't spare him, you may believe me. If it were anything else, I might have overlooked it, but I simply won't stand carelessness. What's the world coming to, I'd like to know. I was saying only the other day, there 's no such thing as a perfect servant any more, or even a servant that knows her place, eh? Now, when I was a child, we had the most THE ACTOR PLAYING LODOVICO: [To himself.] Of course I did n't happen to marry the leading lady, and so I'm cast for what's left over. And me with six-years' stock experience! But I've no one but myself to blame; I should have known better than to sign up with old Kloh bert. Besides, Shakspere's nothing for an ambitious young man. It's all right when you 're older, for revivals and things like that, but for a fellow like myself- And he's a popular actor! ELDERLY GENTLEMAN IN BALCONY G 107: [Asthmatically to his nephew, at intervals.] THERE 's no use talking, Philip; they have n't the same kind of actors nowadays as they had when I was a boy. When I think of the opportunities there are in Shakspere's glorious tragedies, I wonder why so few of your modern performers take advantage of them. And when they do, how feeble they all are! These innovators, for that 's all they are, Philip,how can they hope to improve on the mod els of their illustrious predecessors? remember as plain as if it were yesterday when Booth first . . . And when poor John McCullough . . . And Barrett . . . And Salvini in his prime . . . THE YOUNG LADY IN D 14: [To herself.] Of all the bores! The play 's stupid enough in itself, Heaven knows, but to have to sit through it next to a tongueless nonentity is really too much. I don't care if he is literary; I was a fool to try and make an impression on him. Besides, a Besides, a man that will send gardenias when orchids are only a few cents more- I wonder if he does n't know that those pumps of his are hopelessly out of date. None of the really smart people wear them nowadays. I was an absolute ninny to refuse Pauline's invitation. When I think I could have been dancing my head off at a perfectly good tango-party- I wonder if the Castles are dancing to-night? THE YOUNG MAN IN D 16: It's all my own fault. If I had n't gone on the classics, she might have enjoyed it. She's so wrapped up in this stuff, I have n't the nerve to talk, not even between the acts. I don't want her to think me a lowbrow; so there you are. Serves me right for going in over my head. Well, what you know about that, choking her, without even investigating or letting her explain? The classics certainly are queer; but I suppose I don't appreciate 'em. I wish I felt the way she does about 'em. That might help matters some. Well, to-morrow is another day. THE STAGE-MANAGER: [In various voices to the electrician.] HEY, Bill, a little more moonlight. That's it. Say, I guess I must have told you about that spot a dozen times, but you folks will never learn. As if I did n't have trouble enough putting ginger in a rusty old drama without having your worries on my mind. [A little more confidentially.] Well, anyway, they'll have to hand it to me this time for the production; I guess they realize the only reason people come to the show is to see the way it 's put on. I did n't go abroad last year for nothing, I tell you. I guess that third act was a bad set, huh, with those Gordon Craig effects in the background, and some of the costumes like the ones Bakst did, and others like those in Reinhardt's shows? And I guess that big bowl of Futurist fruit was n't a stunning note, huh? And all in one act! That's going some. They 'll have to hand it to me all right this time. I tell you, you can put life into any old thing. DE "DEGAS, the great painter, is not personally a commercial success, though he has enriched more than one art collector. He lives very humbly on a fourth floor in Montmartre."-NEWS DESPATCH. EGAS lives up four flights of stairsStairs that are worn and somewhat twisty? Why not? Why all these foreign airs? You must admit he is no Christy. Any art editor well knows That "art for art's sake" 's just a pose. Who is this Degas, anyhow? I 've never seen a thing he 's painted. Sounds like a Dago. Frenchman? Wow! Take it from me, French art is tainted. Why, don't I see that thing, "Le Rire"? Such dinky drawing don't go here. Give me our pretty Gotham girls. There's one for my midsummer cover. Say, did you ever see such curls? Some class to that! I love a lover. And all the public loves 'em, too. That's why we run 'em all year through. Oh, no hard feelings. It is n't art? I hate the term. Who cares for art? My illustrators Are all immune to such a germ; They don't know art from alligators. Americans, I have a hunch, Must have a picture with a punch. What is a "punch"? That lets you out. Unless the sentiment is hoary- What's that you say? Line, color, form, And composition? Ah, you task me. I am not hired to stir a storm, But just to "raise the wind." You'll Maybe for what 's original; By no means. A genius? Say, down in my jeans. I'd go to help him out, and- Hello! He 'll go, I'll try his illustration. THE SENIOR WRANGLER A NEW THINKER I NEVER have any luck in picking out the signs of the times, and try as I may to overtake new movements, new thoughts, new dawns, and social reawakenings, dozens of them for one reason or another still get away. Even when I do succeed now and again in catching up with an advanced thinker, I seldom share that bright and early feeling with which he manifestly glows. For example, I once got abreast of a man much admired in his day for mental forwardness. I forget his name, but recall that it was short and energetic, and suited to this Age of Steel-something like Chuggs, I think. He had been pent up as a young man in some college professorship, but had broken away, and was lecturing on progress along all the principal trade routes of the country. Professor Chuggs was one of those who assure us at short intervals that the present moment is the most egregious moment of the most egregious year of the most egregious century that "the world has ever seen," and that the next moment will be more egregious still. He wrote a good many of those articles which declare that China is turning over in her sleep and that Persia is fairly buzzing; that in the waste places of Africa five business men will soon be blooming where one blade of grass had grown before; that through the mighty arteries of commerce the life-blood of civilization is coursing to the extremities of the earth; that already there is open plumbing in Patagonia and steam drills are busy in Tibet. He used all the metaphorical paraphernalia of progress, including "giant strides." Yet the effect on the human mind was singularly quieting. I wonder why it is that some men "write up" Niagara in such a manner that you prefer your own lawn-sprinkler. His magazine, "The On-Rush," which was defined in a sub-title as "A Handbook of the Coming Cataclysm," announced as its policy the avoidance of conformity with "every bourgeois conception," which, in its application, seemed simple enough; for the writers had merely to find out what a bourgeois conception was, and then take a flying leap away from it. It opened with a "Hymn to Moral Rapidity," of which one stanza ran, as I remember, something like this: One thought in the bush is worth two in the head, So it tossed systems of philosophy about like bean-bags, "hit off" each classic writer in a phrase careless but final, was on familiar, joking terms with all the sciences, explained woman, silenced history, summed up everything and everybody-the human race, the fathers of the church, genius, love, marriage, and the future state. In short, each page was conscientiously prepared as a mustard-plaster to draw the blood to some unused portion of the reader's intellect. Yet it had no such effect. On the contrary, one gathered from it nothing more specific or exciting than that materialism was an inadequate philosophy, that socialism was in the air, that there was corruption in politics, that education did not educate, and that marriage was a good deal of a bother. Apparently the editor and contributors had nerved themselves by battle-songs into repeating these common remarks of our tea-tables, all in a tone of desperate valor, as if hourly expecting each platitude to be their last. I suppose there must be "new thinkers" in this country, and that they must sometimes come out on the news-stands. Yet a "new thinker," when studied closely, seems merely a man who does not know what other people have already thought. The "new thinker," if I may attempt a definition derived from my own unfortunate magazine readings, is a person who aspires to an egregiousness far beyond the limits of his thought. He is a fugitive from commonplace, but without the means of effecting his escape. F. M. Colby. |