Puslapio vaizdai
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"only a child."

"Lord," came a little voice from the neighborhood of his ear, "honorably forgive me. It was my heart-"

"I am glad of that," said the soldier. This she could not understand, why he should laugh at her sick heart.

"It beats one to two just now." "Naughty heart!" said the soldier. "Why is that?"

"When I am-as now," breathed the

"No, I am a woman. I was tall when girl. However," she went on, "there

I could stand."

"Then," said the soldier, "you were once quite well?"

"Yes," said Hasu.

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'And what caused your illness?" demanded the soldier.

"I?" said the girl. "Who knows? Shaka sends illness and sends health.”

"Then you shall be tall again," cried the soldier. "What, do I not know! What was I? Me? I myself would take your illness. But then I should be ill myself, and you would not wish me. Women wish whole men. But there are other ways. Do I not know? Listen. When I left here with the legs that man had given me, I was yet far from healed. He must have been but young. Truly they were but women's legs."

"Oh," cried the girl, "and so quite useless! What a pity!"

"Not at all. Women's legs are better than none. And the marching, the getting forth at dawn with the sun on one, made a man's legs of them.”

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'Shaka be thanked," breathed the girl, humbly. "So that you owed him, the man, nothing-nothing at all!"

"Everything. For without his woman's legs there would have been no beginning." "Ah, Shaka is good!"

"So shall it be with you." "That my legs shall be a man's! Yes, Lord," agreed Hasu, though she may have doubted the desirability of it.

"First I will carry you, then you shall put your feet down, then you shall walk, run, dance. Is it not already done?” "Yes," whispered the girl, with her eyes closed, the ecstasy upon her face.

"And then I will marry you."

The girl's eyes flew open, her heart stopped, she toppled over upon the young man. But the soldier had seen enough of coma not to be frightened. When she woke she was, indeed, in his arms.

are times when it beats two to one."

"And when is that?" asked the soldier. "When I am happy, very happy," sighed the small voice near his ear.

She tried to withdraw her arms, but he laughed, and held them there.

"Why do you do that, Lord?" she said. "To make the heart I feel against me beat two to one."

"Alas! Lord, that is useless."

"Let us see. Have I kept my promise?" "Why, yes, Lord," though she really did n't know; that is what a Japanese would answer.

"You are walking-"

And he held her as if she had been a straw, and dragged the pitiful little feet along the ground.

"Yes, Lord."

"Therefore, when will you condescend to marry me?"

Again the choking and faintness. But, "When you wish, Lord of all my souls!" Hasu answered with the utmost obedience.

"Then to-morrow," said the soldier. "Yes, Lord of my souls," sighed Hasu. Obedience is the first law of woman.

"And now," said Toya, "I have every desire fulfilled but one- to find that man I owe it all to and pin these medals on his breast. But you are very wise, my little moon-maid. The priest has said so, and so I have found you. And you will help to find the man, and your own small hands shall pin the medals on his breast." "I will help to find him, Lord." "Together we will search forever." "For-r-rever," repeated Hasu.

But that night she locked the cabinet which held the letters and the crested ring, and threw its key into the well. And she gave the cabinet to the keeping of the priest, not telling what it held, only saying it was to be buried with her, unopened.

And perhaps they did not suspect what the cabinet held; yet perhaps they did.

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AN UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

FROM A RECENTLY DISCOVERED LIKENESS ATTRIBUTED TO FRAGONARD

In 1876, an unidentified portrait of a man was bought from the Laperlier collection in Biskra, Algeria. Eight years ago the purchaser of the portrait took it to Paris, where it was seen by Mr. P. A. Gross, the American painter. Mr. Gross, recognizing it as a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, purchased it, and is now the owner of it. It is reproduced here with his permission.

French critics who have seen the picture have expressed the belief that it is the work of Fragonard, who is known to have been a friend and admirer of Franklin's, and whose allegorical engraving of him is well known. The brushwork and the handling of the portrait might well be those of Fragonard, and the painting has much of the vigor and animation of his best work. On the sky of Fragonard's Franklin engraving there appears the legend "Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." The same legend was painted at the top of the portrait here reproduced.

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I

THE THEATRE OF YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND TO-MORROW

BY JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON

MIGHT preface my remarks on this subject by the statement that during my career of forty years on the stage I have never previously contributed an article to a magazine or put my name to a book, which is something of a record in these days when every man is his own Boswell. At the same time I might plead it as an excuse for inevitable shortcomings in such an essay as I am undertaking. Nevertheless, I feel that my hitherto self-imposed silence regarding the experience acquired in the course of my calling may now be removed to some extent, as I am on the point of closing the last chapter of my life-work, and have started to ring down the curtain on the last acts of the plays I have had the pleasure of interpreting for many years.

Looking backward will always afford one of the chief pleasures of life, but looking forward is probably a more useful pastime, if only pour encourager les autres.

First and foremost, I am and have always been an optimist through good and ill report. I think that the stage to-day, regarded as a whole, is vastly better than it was half a century ago. Everything has improved in the theatre. The acting is much better as far as the tout ensemble is concerned, even if we have not so many individual pinnacles as in the past. Plays are more ambitious, better staged and better mounted, yes, and better written on the average than they were forty years ago. There are only one or two dramatic authors of the seventies whose names will survive.

The attitude of the public toward the theatre has also broadened appreciably from the narrow and puritanical aspect with which the stage was regarded even in my own earlier days. Playgoers, however, should bear in mind that couplet:

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, And those that live to please must please to live.

Authors have far more liberty-it is for the playgoer to see that they do not take too much license-than they have experienced at any time in America or in England, and it is obvious the change is for the better. It is my belief that almost any subject can be discussed on the stage, provided it is approached with sufficient delicacy and tact, so as not to make the judicious grieve. We have sometimes experienced unfortunate instances of bad taste in several modern plays, but these exceptions are very few and of no staying power. To my mind the desire and appreciation of the public for the best the author, the actor, and the manager can and will give were never so great as now.

We see this in so many ways, chief of all perhaps in the fine support given to the Shakespearean drama here. I understand that there have recently been a score of Shakespearean productions played simultaneously in America, all of which have met with a considerable degree of success, and I can speak only in terms of gratitude of my own experience. We hear a great deal of "the good old days" and of the decline and fall of the modern drama, but personally I do not believe it. We hear of the severe competition of the cinema and vaudeville, all more or less healthy signs of the times, and for myself I welcome their advance as generally wholesome forms of entertainment. At the same time, it must be granted that nothing can replace the spoken word upon the stage, though competition in every art or walk of life is healthy enough if we are sufficiently wise to learn and profit by it.

The people have a right to the form of recreation and amusement they may demand. Why should the man in the street be expected to support Shakespeare? It is perfectly natural that he should prefer lighter forms of entertainment. The classics are an acquired taste, and appeal only to the comparatively cultivated few,

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