This animal, by the way, was sent to her by an anonymous admirer, and had on his collar the following couplets : "I'm the pug of a singer in opera comique. "My life is quite uneventful, you see," said Miss Jansen, a smile in her large eyes, the other afternoon. "One day is pretty much like another. I haven't done half the things they say I have. I have neither eloped nor married, nor studied art in Italy, nor danced a dance with castanet accompaniment in Spain, as some of you imagina tive newspaper men have reported." But this much, at any rate, is true: Miss Jansen has traveled extensively, and not always on business, both in this country and in Europe. During her stay in London she met some of the best literary and artistic people there. The names of William Black, George Augustus Sala, Bret Harte, Alma Tadema, figure on the pages of her autograph album. Unstudied in carriage, with lots of bounce and go about her, a winning voice, she can be as independent as was Catarina Gabrielli. You know what that diva once replied to the there is behind every manscript a man who is explained and interpreted by and through his manuscript. Just as the shell of a mollusk enables the scientist to tell what kind of an animal lived inside, or just as fossil remains in the hands of the discerning zoologist or geologist reveal not only a complete knowledge of the lives of the fossils, but the geologic age in which they lived and moved and had their being, so literary remains, manuscripts, books, etc., make known to him who can read aright, the life and motives of the human animal who produced them, and also the "very age and Sincerely Yours body of the time." Even before this theory had found so complete an explanation in the writings of M. Taine, such writers as Schlegel and Müller had penetrated the secrets of the past, and in their histories and philosophies of literature had revealed new worlds unknown to the ordinary historian. A corollary of this theory is that the miracle is unknown in literature as in nature. All things, even the best, are a growth, a development. A Minerva never springs full panoplied from the head of Jove. In these latter days of culture there is a disposition among dramatists, actors, and Empress of Russia, who haggled over the pecun- literati to worship Shakespeare (not to mention the iary demands of the artiste. "Five thousand ducats! Why, I don't give more than that to one of my field-marshals!" "Very well," replied Gabrielli, Your Majesty may get your field-marshals to sing for you, then." Lewis Rosenthal. DIVUS SHAKESPEARE. A DISTINGUISHED French critic has advanced a theory of literature that finds its analogy in the natural world. According to this ingenious writer, American proclivity to adore Bacon.) He appears to them a prophet, yea, more than a prophet! - a very god, a creator, an Apollo whose "eye in fine frenzy rolling doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown . . . turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name." Robert Ingersoll even goes so far as to prefer Shakespeare to the Bible, and affirms that he delights more in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" than in Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Without dwelling upon the impropriety of comparing a jews'-harp with a thunder storm, or butterflies' wings with an oratorio by Mozart, the absurdity of this deification of any particular author may be brushed aside by showing the merits and godlike qualities of other authors. I insist on a pantheon of gods, if any are to be deified. Let us at least be as liberal with our authors as Rome was with the Cæsars. She deified them all alike. What of John Milton, the great epic poet, the sweeping grandeur of whose numbers have a pomp of sound and energy of expression that Shakespeare himself would have greatly admired? Milton has worshipers as well as Shakespeare. Has the world forgotten Homer? No, nor ever will! He was a creator of gods ! Critics, (and great ones,) writing with Shakespeare in their hands, have affirmed that Old Homer possessed more of the poetic fire, the divine afflatus "Invention's limbec, contemplation's wing, than any of the other poets or dramatists, ancient or modern. It shone evenly throughout all his works and illumined every page. It pervaded every couplet and line and distich; while in Shakespeare it struck like the lightning, unexpectedly. star The same fire in Goethe shimmered like a "That maketh not haste, That taketh not rest.' Now, the taste that prefers the lightning to a star, or a star to the all-pervading sun, is the taste that will exalt Shakespeare or Goethe above Homer or Milton. But it is not essential to enter the Olympus of the literary gods and drag the great ones down. Let us examine Shakespeare in the light of his own writings and in comparison with those of his own contemporaries. A careful study of the manuscripts of the authors of the Elizabethan or "Golden Age" of English literature clearly demonstrates the wonderful impetus that was given to dramatic composition. Shakespeare was not a solitary peak standing in the midst of a wide waste of mediocrity, but the loftiest summit among a group of dramatic leviathans - all snow-capped and cloud-piercing. There was John Webster, the gloomy glory of whose tragedies even Shakespeare's genius could not surpass. There was Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher and Haywoodwhose pens were all dipped in the same elixir as Shakespeare's mellifluous quill. Here is a tribute to poesy from Ben Jonson, that I think equals anything in Shakespeare: "Sweet poesy's sacred garlands crown all your gentry, Which is of all the faculties on earth The most abstract and perfect. If she be Within the liquid marble of her lines, That they will stand fresh and miraculous, Here's another verse from Thos. Middleton, whose sweetness cannot be excelled. Speaking of a beautiful nun, he says: "Upon those lips The holy dew of prayer lies like pearl, Dropped from the opening eyelid of the morn Upon the bashful rose." Or what more vivid realization of death can be found in Shakespeare than is conveyed in these lines from John Fletcher : "'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest. Children bring it to us, strong men seek it, And kings, from height of all their painted glories, A few unhandsome pleasures or life's profits We write from memory; and a multitude of others troop before our inner view, all tending, not to dethrone Shakespeare, but to enthrone the universal genius of mankind. We would not shatter his image, or have any of his worshipers say with Homer: "Dead, and forever gone our idol lies, But rather stimulate a senseless idolatry into a reasonable worship. Hamilton S. Wicks. TO TWO OLD FRIENDS. As here I sit in shade and tweed A rowing-pot of pewter. What need to praise Cabana's pride, Or, howso named, glow deified Let crystals brim with costly wine: A moment's joy they measure, Z., in London Truth. FRIENDS OLD AND NEW. MAKE new friends, but keep the old, W. B. R. AMERICA IN PARIS. (From the London Truth.) It was rather daring of the American comedians in ordinary of Mr. Daly to come here to give a series of three performances. But fortune favors the brave, and, although Paris was technically out of town, and the weather tropical, there were really brilliant houses every night. This, of course, was to some extent due to the clever campaign undertaken on behalf of the Daly company by Mr. Haynie, an American dramatist, and to the brilliant diplomacy of Mr. Chatterton, their business representative, who is a brother, by-the-by, of Perugini the tenor, hand in glove with all magnates of the artistic world here, a beau jeune homme to boot, and one who inspires sympathy wherever he goes. To the Parisians of the Boulevards and the English residing here, the Daly company was delightful as a novelty-as something that smacked strongly of the United States. The pleasure so caused was greatly enhanced on the second night by the excellence of the performance. On the first night things did not go on so well. Every one but Lewis was nervous. He, who is a bundle of nerves, managed to keep his head cool, and I could see that Coquelin, who was my near neighbor, was tickled almost to death at the quaint and curious effects of his low comedy. It was unique. The strong American ring (it was not at all a twang) of the voice was appreciated most by those not used to it. Coquelin the younger, had come back all the way from Orange, whither he had gone during the fêtes there to act in a play of Terence, in the old Roman Amphitheatre. Most of the actors and actresses who hope to reap golden harvests in the United States, and eke dramatic authors, flocked to the Vaudeville to see the American plays and to try and form an idea of what suits public taste in New York. There were also a number of wouldbe managers - cosmopolitan and very clever Jews for the most part. One of them who has six children, who have all musical and dramatic gifts, and with whom he intends one day to form a roving troupe, watched the whole series of the plays as intently as if his whole future depended upon the notions they might suggest to him. He means hereafter to start a play-house in America. All the plays were frank piracies, or adaptations from the French and German, but they are not so fizzing and strong as the original. I had no idea until I saw the American plays on the boards of the Vaudeville, how necessary the unholy element has become to play-goers used to the pieces of Labiche, Dumas fils, Sardou, and other French dramatic authors. The illusion of being in an American playhouse was (to those who had never been across the Atlantic) complete. But Mr. Daly resented being told this, because the theatre was below his standard of convenience. In America ventilation, he said, is managed otherwise. The French, he learned, regard fresh air as a mortal enemy. He saw that, in the African heat that prevailed, his actors and actresses were ready to sink on the stage from exhaustion, and that the public which came to see them were panting for breath as if in an oven. The only way that he could possibly mend matters was by keeping the window of the green-room, at the back of the flies, open. But he had to rush in there every moment to see that the persons employed behind the scenes did not shut it. The inconvenience of the pit seats would not be tolerated in New York; but the machinists he found understood their business. A Frenchman placed in a groove moves well and easily in it. Daly is a curiously American type of manager and adapter. He is, I believe, prospering greatly. He told me that he learned his business as the dramatic critic for three New York journals, and then thought he would like to try his hand at what he had written about so much. He understood what the public wanted; and as he had the répertoire of all Europe to cull from and adapt, he would be at next to no expense for authors. So seventeen years ago he started his theatre, and had Lewis from the beginning in his company. I never saw a more diligent and less nagging manager than Daly. He is simply ubiquitious behind the scenes, and, being light of foot, he runs hither and thither in an astonishing way; gives finishing touches to the stage before the curtain rises, is ready with cues to actors and actresses when it is up, watches the aspect of the house, notes what effect brings it down, so as to tell the person or persons to whom it may be due that it is one to repeat another night; darts forward, when bare-shouldered ladies make their exits, to see that wraps are quickly thrown around them; supplements the call-boy when he is not active, and never gets in any one's way or on anybody's nerves. He is a man of few words, and yet not dry; feverishly busy without being in a fever; cool-headed and good-natured, and, so far as I could see, civil and obliging all around. In 1869, he plunged, he told me, into his speculation, and learned experience "going around." "When a man goes around," he said, "all that he learns is his own, and he gets pretty lively. Now and then he meets with a bad knock, but that don't matter much. It's better almost to be knocked to bits than to crawl along like a snail, running no risk and gaining no experience that will count. You see, a man, however active, has always, if his business widens out, to be trusting agents, and has to depend as much on those he employs as on himself. Your man that has not had the knocks don't know how to choose an agent or any other person to do his work, and when he gets in a bad emergency it don't brighten him up, but muddles his brain so that the difficulty pulls him down, instead of, as all difficulties well surmounted do, leading him on to something better. "It was pretty stiff work," he continued. "to have to drive abreast the theatrical business for three newspapers, having all different classes of readers. But it was a sort of work in which I gained insight into the tastes of a varied public, got to understand theatrical business, and to know theatrical people." The first evening the Daly company, as I have hinted, did not do nearly so well as on the next. They felt that perhaps it was rather audacious to come to show off in a capital where, if the theatres are the worst aired and worst arranged of any in the world, theatrical art is carried to a great pitch of perfection. The critics and the French part of the house, they apprehended would be fastidious. Hence a constraint in their acting, and a too great hurry in the delivery of the dialogue. Miss Rehan, however, had the great advantage of being in an evening dress. Her admirable bust and statuesque arms were in full view. She and Miss Dreher have fine figures, dress very well, and, though tall, are graceful in their movements. Has it ever occurred to you how hard it is for a tall woman to manage long skirts - and short skirts are out of the question in her case. A tall actress is also at a disadvantage in the kissing and hugging part of the business. A lady can hold up her lips to be kissed, but to do so in an interesting manner is not a gentleman's privilege - he must kiss down. Also I should bar big bustles were I a manager and had tall, fine-looking actresses to get through the embracing parts of the play. As they have to stoop, the bustle becomes a caricature in its prominence. Mr. Daly and Mr. Chatterton have a very high opinion of Miss Rehan as an actress, and say that she is the most natural one on the stage. She is a Limerick lass, but was "hardly around' when she went to America, and has a soft, sweet voice, and, they tell me, a most genial temper. She showed a good deal of cleverness on the second night; and on the third night, in a man's dress. Miss Dreher, who was a young widow in one of the plays, was nice enough to tempt the most confirmed bachelor present into matrimony. Mrs. Gilbert has been compared to Mlle. Jouassin, who acts at the Français the parts of duennas, peevish aunts, ill-natured old governesses and mothers of the wet-blanket kind. It was very funny to see a mamma of this sort in an American play in which her newly-married daughter talked of obtaining a divorce. I object to mothers being made disagreeable things on the stage. Marie Laurent is quite right not to play any maternal part that is not noble, sweet and emotional. I have struck up almost a friendship with the Lewises who brought me letters of introduction, and I had a talk of a couple of hours with Lewis in his bedroom, where he was amid a lot of unpacked traveling-bags and portmanteaus. We talked only of theatrical art. He told me that an accident threw him on the stage. A friend who was going to New York to look for a better engagement than he had in the provincial town in which Lewis then lived, came to him and asked him if he could replace him at the theatre. "All right," was the answer. He studied the part, and when the friend had left went to the manager, who had to accept the substitute or shut up for the evening. wife is a perfect jewel, and as modest as a country girl. Their home is in New York. She is not on the stage, but travels about everywhere with her husband, and utilizes the odds and ends of time, when she is not in the cars, in art-embroidery for the adornment of their home. Like Daly, His Lewis has had the knocks and experience which teach a man to see with his own eyes and think his own thoughts. He looks off the stage nervous and sensitive. In talking, his ideas flow freely, and he expresses himself in terms that sound like spontaneously-coined aphorisms, which have an original and very American stamp. He would be ugly if his face had not been so trained to obedience to his mind and will. His mouth is very visibly an instrument for expressing what goes on in his brain, and one does not think of it as a cavity for absorbing food. BOOKS AND AUTHORS. - Messrs. Lee and Shepard have now ready "The Book of Eloquence," by Charles Dudley Warner, a collection of extracts in prose and verse from the most famous orators and poets, intended as exercises for declamations in schools and colleges. - The Brooklyn Magazine for September contains a ghastly account of John G. Saxe, now a wreck, and several sermons by Mr. Beecher and Mr. Talmage; also the announcement that the St. Louis Republican, a Democratic paper, is the most popular daily with 4,841 out of 7,101 voters. -— Boston Beacon. Mr. Edmund Gosse is called by the St. James' Gazette "such a stylist as but few are in these undisciplined times, whenever his bad angel ceases from misleading him into those exasperating affectations which spoil his work here and there. In his Life of Raleigh' the air of the sea or some less poetic influence has swept Mr. Gosse's preciosities off into the dim inane, or the abyss, or some other appropriate place." •No A baseball student finds that Shakespeare was very fond of the game, and alluded to it in the following quotations: "The nine worthies." "Pardon me if I speak like a captain." "Will make him fly an ordinary pitch." doubt but that he hath got a quiet pitch." "I'll have an action of battery against him." Masking the business from the common eye." 'Kind umpire of men's miseries." "Must have a stop." "Had no other books but the As swift in motion as score and the tally." a ball.” “A hit, a very palpable hit." "It was a black, ill-favored fly.' For nothing can seem foul to those that win." Our play is preferred." "The base is right." "Tis time we twain did show ourselves in the field." "Taste your legs; put them in motion." "He that runs fastest gets the ring." Would I were gently put out of office before I were forced out.' Mr. J. B. Millet, who has been superintendent of the art department at the Riverside Press, will take charge of the illustrations in Scribner's Magazine. FROM THE WEST. HE was a wild friend of mine from the far West, and he came to New York to see the sights. As he was theatre-crazy, he had read up all about our actors and actresses, and was very anxious to learn more. On the day of his arrival we dined at Delmonico's, and I introduced him to a chum of mine, with whom he soon became friendly. After the roast my chum whispered to me: "Don't say anything, and let me do all the answering.' I nodded assent, and, as expected, our Westerner began talking about actors. Addressing my friend, he said: "Who is Edwin Booth?" "Edwin Booth was once a car conductor. He is to-day our best low comedian." - Coquelin cadet is enthusiastic over Baron, the actor. Baron's voice," he says, "gives one the idea of its being the product of a cross between a trombone and an elderly feline denizen of the roof-tops. This extraordinary hoarseness, this triumphant and ever-present cold mingled with tones of brass (the trombone), this shrill gruffness while the owner is seeking mellifluous accents (the old cat), this voice that tears the ear like a thunder-clap, this voice that reminds one of a saucepan bounding at a dog's tail, this voice that certainly cannot be compared with the golden organ of the Great Sarah, this voice so unsuited for a Romeo, this voice which forces a laugh from listeners through its astounding discordances, this voice which might be compared to that of the gargoyles of Notre Dame (if gargoyles had speech), this very voice forms half of Baron's success. And just fancy! When he was first engaged at the Variétiés this invaluable organ was declared impossible and he was prayed to change it. He, Baron, change his voice! Sacrilege! Abomination! Let nightingales be dumb! Let the springs dry up their waters! But let Baron ever speak with his own voice." Editorial in Washington Critic: “An event of more than ordinary interest is the engagement of Mrs. Bowers this week at the Grand Opera House. After years of retirement from the stage, she appears again before her old friends and neighbors in rôles made famous by Ristori and Janauschek, and demonstrates that but one American actress can justly claim to be her rival - Clara Morris. Miss Morris is emotional, Mrs. Bowers tragic. In some respects she is greater than Miss Morris. She possesses more nobility of expression. Where Miss Morris is at times careless as to details, and reserves all her powers for the painfully thrilling scenes, Mrs. Bowers is at all times a thorough artiste, never dropping her rôle, but carrying the auditor's interest from scene to scene until it culminates in the dénouement. One scene does not stand out in sharp contrast with another, but her whole performance is a finished one. That she has become the leading American tragedienne is unquestioned, and in her talents and success Washington, her old home, takes a gratified pride.' -Parties desiring to study Elocution or Dramatic Art will find a competent teacher in Professor J. A. Bleecker. Those occupied during the day can make arrangements for evening lessons upon applying at the studio, No. 4 West 22d Street, New York. "Vinaigre Français au Raifort Epicé" is pronounced by epicures one of the finest condiments for use with oysters, vegetables, salads, etc. It excites the appetite and aids digestion. For sale by all grocers. |