The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 21, 1895, Page 13

I S THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL. SUNDAY, JULY 21, 1895. 13 — e —— Benjam’m I ITranklins s & Thompson BY J0AQUIN MILLER- t That was his name when he first came to Redding Springs, afterward known and still known as Shasta City. And whata splendid mass of splendid men in those old days, men gathered there as in battle charge against the golden spurs of knightly and imperious Mount S Even a of the ‘“cities” and tow d each town wasa t Middletown, Centervil etown, Horsetown, n more, all the of Shasta City. T of Laconia. Th 1 a lot into one little y with m ave behind is mnot, the California your dialect dic there never w rere dialect in t there. What we cheap stuff in ot stepped into it i the Oregon Si they were, man he Califor- the richest, is region, and itest and best ily. ¢ against this 5 v/ Pockel enough. Quite right. Thegoid was there. The eagle bird, in all his wide-winged glory, was there, too. What mattered the face and the date? It was a good deal like that with Thomp- son after he ceased to shootand be so- le. The gold was still there what was left of him. You could hear his fiddle at his cabin door away up among the man- zanita bushes on the hill at the head of Gamblers’ Gulch. You could see the tall, bent man shuffle down on his huge feet like sledrunners to the store once each week; and once each springtime, as the seasons surged by, somebody planted California poppies in a corner of the grave- yvard back of town and made the place look restful and quiet like, so that the quail might pipe and call there and not feel afraid; but that is all that was now seen or known of Thompson. The facefious postmaster once had a let- ter for Thompson with only the initials of his Christian names, and so he spoke of him as “Big Foot Thompson.” “The shoe fits him,” said the rag-tag- and-bobtail end of town. And so Benja- min Franklin Thompson was soon all worn off and lost to right forever in Shasta City, JOAQUIN MILLER. [Reproduced from his latest photograph.] e dialect outside of the darkies the United States. To insist on hat spends more money on than all the rest of the world to get on with Benjamin Franklin pson’s pocket. v counted a great fault in a sere are plenty of men in Shasta 3 11 who can remember when Dave Pittit, ignoring nominating conven- aloons, cliques and clans and all ical parties of all sorts, took his fiddle 1is arm, and on foot and alone, fid- his way right into the heart of every 1 the mountains. to get on with B. F. Thompson’s cket, Thompson was 2 miner, from first to ast—a miner exclusively, He was a good an. True, he would swear and he was also a famous liar, especially about mines. Of course he played poker, and this also meant hard drinkingand a shooting scrape now and then, in which he putin some deadly work at times. But with these minor exceptions he was an excellent fel- low. In the spring of 1856, on the day when we hanged Alexander Higgins for having killed his partner and hidden him in a prospect hole, Th shooting scrape. It thetic; too much so to have full credence at this remote d; over in silence. F his whole nature. He drank no more, gambled no more, did not shoot anybody any more: b The boys up the, poker w golddust in bu tion that mus In short, he ceased to be socia- | | | eedless form of literature there | like the date on the gold coin. He was only Big Foot Thompson now. But how | that old fiddle used to call out from that to insult the intelligence | Digger pine hilltop over the manzanitas! And were I to tell you how I once stole up there in the brush and saw a circle of white-breasted hares standing about in the white moonlight, only a rod below his big | feet, you would not quite believe it, and so hompson wasa great fiddler. This, I'Iwill not tax your credulity. ButIam glad they came to him in his drear, hard | life of penance; for no man ever darkened | his cabin door now. The sight of those | timid creatures listening to the music of the poor murderer opened a book to me that has taught much, much; so much more than can be told. Do you know anything about pocket- ‘mining? Everybody knows all about it | around Mount Shasta now, but they did | not know till Thompson taught them. The fact is gold grows, grows as potatoes grow; | slowly, of course, but up out of the ground. Up through ancient little quartz chimneys gases come as the ages roll by. These veculiar gases deposit in seams and cracks and caverns of quartz certain parti- cles of gold. Ages roll on; glaciers, ava- lanches, earthquakes and- landslides; gulches are formed; the top of the chim- ney, or pocker, is worn and torn and washed down into and along the guiches. | The gold miner of the old days came by. | He washed out the gold from the gulches on had his last|and went his way. Then came Thomp- dramatic and pa- | son, and after him came all the patient army of vocket-hunters, men who follow and so must be passed | the particles of golddust up, up, up, till sh to say it chaneed | they can find no more particles in the gulch or in the dirt of the hills on either side. Then they lmow they have passed the pocket. They then go back, locate it on one side always liked to play | or the other, and then patiently trace the ith coin—gold coin. The piles ot{ gold to its place of original formation. kin bags is another fic-| You sometimes find a fortune, a perfect be perforated. The truth | “‘pocket full of rocks,” a hat full of gold, is, when a big game was contemplated— | lodged in the little chimney top; some- and that was every Saturday night till | times only a few hundred dollars, oftener Monday would go to the express oflices with their ba center.” Now, it scems a silly thing, it the eagle bird was always keptin sight. A poker-player of those days was the most superstitious man born, He would stack most of his money before him, but there would be a loose handful of small gold pieces right under his nose, when he would go to put up, either to “ante,” “‘go a blind,” **buck” or “‘straddle alw put a forefinger on the eagle bird of a gold piece and pushed it to the center of the pot, either tenderly, roughly, tim- idly or boldly, as he pleased. Well, in time this wore both the date and face from nearly all gold birds in and about Shasta. If any stranger objected to this sort of “sawed-off’’ money he gota :‘bluff” that taught him not to do it again, The true gold was there, what little was left of i, and the eagle bird. He was made to believe, with an ugly muzzle across the board shat this was quite s and put them up for all the coin in | ey had a curious way of “coming to | & biind,” “‘call down” or *‘go better," he | ¥ morning in each ‘‘city”—the boys | you do not find it at all, or what is most ex- asperating, you find that the beehive has been found before and robbed of all its honey. And this much for a subject that deserves a volume, but must put up with a paragraph. Thirty years went by. Gamblers’ Gulch had been the richest place of all. It was so called because gamblers when hard up used to go up there and wash out a stake simply with a pan. Thompson had been hunting for years and years for this foun- tain head. He had honeycombed the hill or which his cabin stood. He had bored right and left, east and west, north and south. Sometimes it was noticed that he missed coming down to the store for his usual bag of supplies at the end of the week. Once he had to beg for credit, a rare thing for him. Had he not long since laid aside firearms we might take comfort in the idea that he, in such straits, per- haps shot and ate one or two of his little, large-eyed moonlight friends, for he surely was often hungry to the verge of starva- tion now in these his decrepid days. He grew bent and his face was pinched and thin, His chest gtew narrow and his - shoulders shrank close together. He shrank all around, all, evervthing, everything but his feet. These were nearly bare now. You could see his toeprints on the dusty path as he went and came for water a’ the beautiful Shasta spring. One frosty night in the fall the boys in the saloon were startled almost out of their wits. Peelhead Smith threw down a *full,” although there was a “double pot” and the Turtle Dove, with a six-shooter in his lap, had “straddled” Peelhead’s blind, and he was as sure of raking down ashe was of ‘‘coming to the center” when “called.” There stood Thompson. Was he alive? Was it his ghost? Itlooked like a ghost. His big shoes were yawning. His white toes shone through like teeth of a grinning clown. Nota word. The fiddle came slyly out from under his arm. It lay lovingly along his large bony wrist, and began slow and timid-like as if afraid: Sweet, sweet, sweet, O great god Pan! Never such music since the great world began. The sun ou the hill forgot to die; The lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on theriver. And then he was gone, gone as he came, They had forgotten to ask him to drink. They were not sure if it was Thompson or Thompson’s shadow. They fell to think- ing what slights they had put upon poor old Big Foot these thirty-one-two years; and with gamblers’ superstition they stood by the table, each pocketing his own money, and leaving the double pot to the barkeeper for the drinks, although they aid not drink now, not one of them, much less sit down again to that game and table. It was such a moonlight night! The men melted out of the harroom one by one and sat down facing Gamblers’ Gulch hill, the moon settling and settling low and slow -over their shoulders to the right till finally it fell behind an old empty Chinese washhouse with some of the shakes torn off, and then the silver leaves sifted through and played pretty games of chess on the pavement at their feet. How still! And then suddenly came again that mu- sic from the hill. How glad they were. Each man drew a long breath of relief. “Then he is not dead,” was the thought of each, with a mental promise to go up early in the morning and tell the poor penitent that he was forgiven, and that he was the best of all of them, after all. But what was that piteous, plaintive air? They had never heard the man play that before. “That's ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ ”’ whis- pered the Turtle Dove, an educated old gentleman, as he dug some wax out from under his finger-nail with a broken match. At last the settling moon reached tim- idly through a broken board low down on the old Chinese washhouse, and in token of surrender to darkness laid a sword of sil- ver at their feet, and then ‘‘Home, Sweet Home,”” was heard on the hill no more for- ever. The next morning a great four-mule dray drove into town, on its way up to the little graveyard, from the Redding marble works. “I saw the dogonest tracks in the road, big enough for a bear, and the toes in the dust,” said the man with the dray to the barkeeper, as he hastily wiped his mus- tache on the back of his hand, and then faced about and fired a stream of profanity at the mules. The bystanders looked at one another. Then all on the run they went panting up the hill together. The bar was left to serve itself. “It was a bear, and he has got away with the honey,” cried the barkeeper at the head. Never such laconic men as these miners. There was the pillaged pocket in his very dooryard, only the golden lining here and there to show what a hoard it had held, almost on the surface and right at his feet. And that was all. The new, spruce conductor at Redding who got his place temporarily through the strike told the eager miners how an old man with a heavy gunnybag and hammer and little crowbar had climbed into the cars that night. “And what did hesay?” demanded Peel- head. “Well, I asked him if he had been pros- pecting, and he said ‘Yas.’ ‘“‘Been out a good while? says I. “‘Ya-a-s,” says he, ‘’bout thirty-two years. Ticket to Boston, vlease.” " JoaquiN MILLER. HASHISH AND- HEADACHE, The Seductive Hemp Plant Successfully Grown in Alameda County. It Is Much Stronger In Opiate Prop- ertles Than the Indian Article. Among the new exhibits at the Califor- nia State Board of Trade rooms on Mar- ket street, is a produot never before ex- hibited in California. 1tis Indian hemp, from which hashish is made. Thissample came from a ten-acre patch growing near Livermore, Alameda County, and it was sent in by 8. Nahon, who is familiar with the plant and its products. The Livermore field is being cultivated by several Arabs, who have for years been supplying their countrymen on this coast with the seductive drug. The business has been carried on quietly under the pretense that the hemp was used for canfry bird seed. Mr. Nahon states that the hashish grown on this coast is much stronger or more rank in itsopiate qualities than that grown in Arabia and Indis, due, he supposes, to the soil being less worked out than in the Orient. The Alameda-grown hashish is almost a deadly poison, it is so rank, and one smok- ing or eating the stuff is obliged to take it in_homeopathic doses for fear of fatal re- sults. é The Arabs have tried to get the extract, but by their crude process of distillation it is unprofitable, commercially consid- ered, costing almost the market price. However, considerable of the extract is sroduced for the use of those who are ad- icted to the hashish habit. The extract is used on sugar—a very small drop to an ordinary lump or cube of sugar. One drop taken in this manner will put an ordinary Arab in_a floating trance that will last for four or five hours. When the effects have worn off the hashish-eater requires an iron band around his cranium to keep his skull from splitting. Mr. Nabon states that there are several colonies of Arabs and Armenians in this State who raise hemp and send hashish in the natural and extract form to several parts of the United States, where their countrymen live. In the natural form it is used for smoking. The small leaves near the sced are used in smoking. A Emch of dry leaves is pulverized in the ands and mixed with a small_quantity of tobacco. Aftertwo orthree puffsof smoke, which, of course, are fully inhaled, the smoker is aead to the world for hours. —————— At the First Baptist Church. Rev. C. H. Strickland, D.D., of Sioux City, Iowa, arrived in the City yesterday. He is a guest of E. R. Smith, 8 Fair Oaks street. &hfie in tl;eiiilynlzei wi'll“!‘ll'la ae First Baptist wurch pulpi s an exce] - ally interesting speaker, o The drama is as old as humanity—its history is the story of the race. At all times its history was in intellectual and moral harmony with the people. Theo- retically, the province of the drama is to instruct and elevate; practically, itis an expression of the sentiment, culture, mor- ality (or lack of them) of the people. As are the people, so is the drama. Acting, or the art of simulating, is in- herent in the human race—and is not con- fined tohuman beings. The best low com- edian I have seen was a fox terrier belong- ing to a.member of my family. Brian Bo- roimme (Brian Boru), as the dog was calied, was entirely uneducated, yet he possessed a complete knowledge of dog- lore, dog-tricks, and dog-possibilities. All these he caricatured—burlesqued—in the most comical way, but always to an audi- ence other than the family. -He could laugh or cry, and he invented quite a number of dog-comedies—improvising to 5u§t the occasion. g Mimicry is inherent in many birds, as well as in many animals, but the drama, as we understand it, isa human invention. It may be said that all beini!s suffering the indignity of repression develop acting qual- ities. Slaves are apt actors. From the beginning of her story woman has been an accomplished simulator. I have seen a woman whose heart was the theater of a consuming passion address the object of that passion in the simpering words of an inane schoolgirl. Her pride inspired the desire to conceal a love not demanded. All men and all women simulate. All have social manners, business manners, exi- gency manners. The real man or woman is rarely exposed. This concealment is natural and legitimate. The true ego is sacred to the man, to maintain its sacred character he acts a part—sometimes har- monious with his ego, sometimes its very opposite. Thechild begins to simulate the moment its appetites or desires develop. So ‘“‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’’—hence the universal interest in the drama. Men as much as women love to look in the mirror, and to all the stage drama is a mirror, in which passion and sentiment are reflected. The early history of the drama isob- scure, but there is enough of truth in the story to show that the dithyrambus, or hymn, used in the early Greek worship of Bacchus, was the germ of all subsequent dramatic work. Thespis, an Tcarian poet (53 B. C.), adopting the dithyrambus re- cited an ode—employing a chorusto sus- tain the recital. chylus, a few years later, developed the drama as we now understand it, but was content with a com- sgn_v of two—with this addition came ialogue and the present drama in minia- ture. ZAschylus also introduced scenery. He got rid of the Thespian bacchanal ode with all its lewdness, and gave the Greeks {mre and elevating tragedy. Thirty years ater Sophocles increased the strength of the dramatic company to three members. Fifteen years later Euripides presented his splendid works to the Greek people. With- out materially changing the status of the company, he entirely changed the motive of the performance. , _ ZEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides live in history as the three greatest,- purely tragic, poets the world has known. Each had a school of his own. The tragedies of Aschylus were charged with horror—their atmosphere, the terrible. He breathed fire and his voice was thunder. His dramatis persone were demi-gods, moral aiants, impossible to humanity. Sophocles was a dreamer and created men and women in a world of his own. Purity, simplicity, moral perfection, were tne attributes of his creatures—but, like the giants of Eschylus, they were impossible in Greece, and are probably still impos- sible anywhere. Euripides gave the Greek a picture of himself. He presented men and women as he found them. His school survived all the changes of time and the method of Euripides is practically the method of to-day. The Greek stage, like Greek art, was severely classical in its arrangements. The Greek theory was that the actors only should fill the eye of the andience. As illustrating how a theory will live in oppo- sition to fact, it will be remembered that Edwin Booth, all his life, maintained the Greek idea that stage effects were opposed to the true purpose of the drama—that the man and his purpose were sufficient for all dramatic representations, and that- rich Brian Boroimme, Low Comedian. scenery, gorgeous even if appropriate cos- tumes and appointments lessened the effect of the drama proper and impeded its na- tural action. B The realistic details of the stage setting of to-day would have been iintolerable to the Greek. He demanded sublimity, gran- Jeur, chaste severity of treatment—one thought, one idea, alone being presented. Such a_presentation was possible where the Greek idea of art controlled the au- dience, but equally it was impossible in theabsence of that art. ‘We have very little knowledge of Greek comedy. Itisintroduced to us by Aristo- phanes a century aiter Eschylus. As Rome, the magnificent absorber, bor- rowed all things from Greece, it followed that she would adopt the Greek drama as her own. But_the severe lines of the Greek were not palatable to' the Roman, who had begun to love color. The merely intellectual expression of the drama failed in its new home. Human woes, simulated by the most intelligent actors, did not sat- isfy the Roman appetite for realism. The moral atmosphere of Rome was out of har- mony with the purity of the Greek method ; so Roman adapters introduced a modifie ureek work—a combination of the tragic and comic. But even this failed to satisfy the Roman thirst for stimulants calculated to excite all their passions. The arena gratified their debased senses, and in the gladiatorial contests the Roman . found his own nature best presented. The drama of the arena displaced the classic works of Grecce. L Rome was not prolific in dramatic poets. Terrence, Plautus and Seneca are her in- tellectual gifts to_the dramatic world, while Roscius and Zsopus were her princi- [ AN NA AP pal contributions to the stage itself. Rome subsequently disgraced herself by attach- ing iuc%amy to the actor’s profession. After Greece and Rome the classicdrama fell into disuse. From time to time efforts have been made to revive it, but naturally and properly without any permanent re- sult. - The purely classical drama belongs to a purely classical age, and such an age is not likely to be revived. But the classic form has outlived all efforts to suppress it, and is to-day the basis of the best dramatic compositions. When Greek (and Romanized Greek) art passed away, the world was given the drama of the Pageant—a thing of gorge- ousness—crude in form, but pleasant to the eye in its barbarous worship of color. The presentation of the Pageant was in the nature of entremet—a dramatic interval between courses at the banquets of the great. Later, under the influence of a re- ligious phase, the world took up the “mys- is a right comedy to mark their be- havior.” After all, the audience thus described d;gera very little from a theater party of t ay. Notwithstanding the denunciations of the church, and the voice of the law, which threatened to “make rogues an vagabonds of the players,” the native force of dramatic work helped it to out- live all attacks upon it. And now the drama had a home. “Blackfriars” furnished Shakespeare and Burbage and their brilliant company of players with a licensed habitation. )l‘he Globe (Shakespeare’s summer-house), the Rose and the Swan followed. Under Elizabeth and James the drama and the player progressed. Under Charles T the Testrictions were limited. During the Puritan_or Cromwellian epoch the stage was abolished, but with Charles II it was restored. Its restoration was disgraced by productions which shame us to-day by even a casual reference to them. It was the natural ebullient reaction following a period of unnatural repression. From Betterton to Edmund Kean there is a long list of distinguishea actors, most of whom belonged to the declamatory school. The list embraces Quin, Elizabet Barry, Barton Booth, Mrs. Oldfield, Robert Wilks, Peg Woflington, Colley Cibber, Ryan, Rich, O'Brien, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. O'Neill, Kitty Clive, Sam Foote, Charles Macklin, Mrs. Bellamy, Miss Farren, Mrs. Abington, Sarah Siddons, John hemble, George F. Cooke, Master Betty (the boy Roscius) and Mrs. Jordan. The declamatory school reigned supreme until the advent of Kean, who somewhat modified its tendency. The first thirty years of the acted drama carry us from “Ferrex and Porrex, or Gam- mer Gurton’s Needle,” to Marlowe’s “Ed- ward II”; another thirty years gives us the first folio of Shakespeare. From | Shakespeare to Kean there were periods | of elevation and degeneracy in matters | dramatic, corresponding to the vicissitudes tery plays”’—works founded on biblical subjects.” A little later ‘‘history plays” were introduced. In themselves these later productions were valueless, but achieved, subsequently, some literary con- sideration as being the germs of the mag- nificent historical productions of Shake- speare and his contemporaries. The evolution of the drama presents the dithyramb as the parent of the Greek drama; the pageant mask or mummery as the father of the romantic school (in crudity), and the classical-romantic as the progenitor of the Shakespearean school. Shakespeare took as a basis foundation the classic form, modified its severity by adding the best elements in the romantic, and by virtue of his universal genius created a new dramatic art which will out- live all other conceptions. 5 In a brief article it is_impossible to fol- low the fortunes of the drama throughout Europe. Indeed, the subject is so large that to review the English drama alone would be the work of volumes rather than pages. It must suffice to say that the story of the drama has been practically the same in all countries, only distin- guished by local coloring. From the period of the observance of the Druid rites in England to the time of Rich- ard III the “Mystery Plays” kept the boards. It is a curious coincidence that Richard III, the first princely patron of the stage, nas suffered more at the hands of playwrights and players than any other character in history. He was the first English prince who carried in his train a troop of players—and he gave the first po- tent impulse to the drama in England. Dunstable had the honor of possessing the first germanent theater, which, strange to say, had Geofrey, a monk, for its manager. But from the advent of the Norman to the Tudor era England was content with the “Mystery Plays.” In Bluff King Hal’s reign the colleges took possession of the drama, clergymen writing and acting in their‘own plays. The first r:fularly con- structed English comedy, “Raiph Roister Doister,” was written by the Master of Eton (1540). This was followed at Cam- bridge by a tragedy called *Pammachus.” During this and subsequent reigns the statesmen of the day used the stage to support their policies. ot until the time of Elizabeth, however, was the drama really reeognized. In her reign there wasa plethora of dramas and a galaxy of intellectunal dramatic stars whose glory fades not. ‘When Shakespeare was born, the English world was accepting, with some show of indifference, the thunder of the church directed against the stage—but with his manhood and his advent in London, there came a_pronounced revival in favor of dramatic performances. There is a curious description of an English theater audience of the period—a description characteristic of the English people of the time of Elizabeth. Old Gosson says: ‘“In our assemblies at plays in London you shall see such heav- ing” and shol‘ltm% such pitching and shouldering, to sit by women; such care for their garments that t}:e{ not trod- den upon, such eyes to their laps that no chips light on them, such pillows for their backs that they take no hurt, such mask- ings to their ears—I know not what— such giving them Pippma to pass the time, such playing at footsaunt without cards, such ticking, such toying, such_ smiling, | beginn: such winking and such manning, then home when the sports are ended, that it of the nation, but no radical change took place until within the past thirty years. The history of the stage, and therefore of the acting drama, may be divided into four epochs, represented by Burbage, Betterton, Garrick and Kean, each of whom rose to the highest standard of genius—each su- preme in his own style of acting—each be- ing the exponent of nature rather than ar- tificiality. If only a life of Burbage or a Burbage diary could be produced, what a wealth of Shakespearesn lore would be ours; but, alas! this pleasure is denied us. We linger regretfully over the name of Burbage, for, asthe friend and first great exponent of Shakespeare, we cannot think of the one without a loving remembrance of the other. Buta few years after the death of Burbage, Betterton appeared and, like his predecessor, devoted himself to what we now call the legitimate, although equaily at home in low or high comedy. Better- ton honored the stageand was buried in the cloisters of Westminister Abbey. He was the first actor to introduce scenery to the English stage and was much abused for it by the critics of his day. Thirty odd years fall into the grave of the past and Garrick takes the stage and at once captures the world by the mar- velous force of his genius. All classes ielded to him a genuine worship, or Garrick gave his world nature and nature only. He despised artificiality and conventionality and in their place presented originality and nature. -~ His splendid success at last aroused a nest of literary hornets, dramatic critics, who un- successfully attacked his ascendency. Fel- low-actors, alas! were his most bitter foes, ‘but his trinmph was not only magnificent but permanent, and his name will ever re- main as one of the four great dramatic stars of their time and perhaps of all time. Garrick sleeps, and lo! another star arises, Edmund Kean entered the world under circumstances pathetic in the ex- treme. His young life was full of sorrow— sordia sorrow that corrodes and degen- erates. A waif, wanderer, almost tramp, yet his native genius forced ogportunit and gave him a position on the Englis! stage not eclipsed by Burbage, Betterton or Garrick. Kean was perhaps the herald of the school that was to follow, which may be best described as ‘‘the intense.”” Coleridge said that to see Kean act was ““like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” Alas! his life was brief and full of bitterness, scarcel{ relieved by an artistic success unparalleled in the history of the stage. Kean’s style was a blending of the re- alistic and the ideal, and he had a disciple in Macready, who perpetuated the Kean school of acting. John Kemble and Sarah Siddons added to the luster of the times. Sarah was the queen of the stage and John Kemble, whose temperament drew him to the se- verely classical, was one of England’s test actors, touching the immortal four, but not one of them. Macready, the second Kean, the elder Booth, Phelg)s Montgomery, G. V. Brooke and Barry uilivan on the English stage, and Edwin, the greatest of the Booths, the greatest Hamlet the world has seen, For- rest, McCullough and Barrett on the Ameri- can stage, regresent the period within the memory of playgoers. But the drama of the present is the result of a revolution inning some thirty years ago with the of the Prince of Wales Theater in Bancroft, where the comedies openin, by of Tom Robertson were most suc. cessfully produced. Comedy, then, for many years practically displaced trag edy.” Tragedy kings and queens were commanded to retire and comedy emperors and empresses took their place. The change was a wholesome one. It widened the scope of the dramatic art and satisfied the desires of earnest lovers o} the drama, who could not believe that all of the drama was included in the tragic. The advent in England of the “‘Comedie Francaise” tended to strengthen the desire for legitimate comedy, and for the first time the English managers were taught the full value of ensemble. The American stage followed the English, and comedy companies of varying excellence presented works of high order, but, as hap- pened in England so in America, the success of the legitimate comedy was almost its destruction. Mushroom com- panies presenting farce-comedies, comedy« farces, comedies equestrian, buzz-saw com- edies, and wild, weird, meaningless attempts at realism threatened the legiti- mate comedy. Lester Wallack gave the American people legitimate comedy; so do Augustin Daly, Palmer and the F' mans. But the razzle-dazzle fraters eclipse in number the legitimate companies as ten to one. Still the legitimate is not dead in England or America. In England Henry Irving, Charles Calvert, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough, Charies Alexan- der and many others have held decency to be as essential to the stage as to the church. In. the United States, Frederick Warde, Louis James, Augustin Daly and Mansfield have pre- served their love for the legitimate, and there are many indications of an early re- turn to pure comedy, flavored with ro- mance. i"rcnch dramatists are taking a large share of English and American pa- tronage, Sardouleadsall other dramatists of the French school, and probably of any school, while Ohnet is a good third. Recently leading London managers gave their audiences ‘‘Diplomacy,”’ ‘‘Becket,” “Ironmaster,” “Hypatia,” A Woman of No Importance,” *‘Liberty Hall,” “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,’” “The Bauble Shop,” “The Amazons,” ‘Walker, Lon- don,” “Charley’s Aunt,” ‘‘The Artist’s Model,” “The Passport” and *The Shop Girl,” the two latter being the works of American authors. All these plays either have been or will be produced in the United States. g Ibsen is before the English world. He is on trial with the odds against him. Al- though not himself fully accepted, there is no doubt that he has infiuenced many of the more recent dramatic works, notabiy, Pinero’s “Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and there is no question that some of H. Jones’ best work owes much to the Nor- wegian poet. Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” and his “Hedda Gabler,” are works de- serving of long life, and IbSen may, after ail, find an unqualified acceptance. Tn the United States, Boker, Henry Guy Carleton, Bronson Howard and Barclay Campbell have given excellent work to the public. Clay Greene and Harry Dam take honors in dramatic work. There does not yet appear to be any distinctive American school of acting nor an American form of drama, and Lon- don and Paris are too near to New York to expect the establishment of any thing_ purely American in dramatic art. Indeed the idea of localizing art is, as it were, to attempt to nationalize the sun. Whatever affects the drama in England is likely to affect it in New York. It is possible, however, for an American author to write a purely American play on | an American subject, and though art itself is universal itsexpression may have a local color. The author who can produce a play like “Alabama” by a touch of the art universal should not be satisfied until he has produced a work, not_local in its mo- tive, but permissibly local in its color. We turn naturally to_ the past, over which there is ever a golden halo, for the names of those who have distinguished the American stage. First (and always first) Edwin Booth, Forrest, Jefferson, McCul- lough, the two Wallacks, Hackett, Sheri- dan, Charlotte Cushman. Sophie Edwin, Mrs. Sanderson, Mrs. Bowers, Edwin Adams, Mrs. Judah (dear old lady) Coul- dock, John Brougham, McKean Buchanan, Bishop, Burton, the Chapmans, Bar- ton ill, J. 8. Clarke, Chanfrau, the Davenports, the Drews, Boucicault, Florence, Keene, Emily Melville, Ada \[gfgie Mitchell, William- Isaacs Menken, ) son, Lotta, J. E. Murdock, J. E. Owens, Robson, Crane, William Warren, Mrs. John Wood, Barney Williams, Harry Edwards, the Batemans, Julia Deane Hayne, the Popes, the Thornes, Frank Mayo, . Eben Plymton, Rose Eytinge, Ben de Bar, ‘Sol Smith Rus- sell, Willie Edouin, Proctor, John How- son, Stephen Leach and John T. Raymond. All these are proper to the American staze and with each name_our loving thoughts linger as our eyes linger while watching the last rays of the setting sun. Many of them are across the stream, many are on the margin, but all bave a place in the affcctions of the playgoers. Of the later school which inc.udes Frederick Warde, Louis James, Mansfield, James O'Neill, Nat Goodwin, it would be invidious to speak, but we may assert that the drama is safe in their hands. The present condition of the drama is only satisfactory in so far as it promisesan early improvement. It seems quite clear that the romantic drama is about to have its innings. The American people are tired of the hodge-podge rubbish of the va- riety nln{, and while not objecting to the vaudeville want something better than mere horse play. They are also tired of the swallow-tailed drama and_the ever- lasting sugar-coated sin. Sin belongs to us; it is a part of us and therefore properly a part of all dramatic conceptions of an intense nature, but the adoration of sin, intellectually gilded, is another thing. Dress-suit plays, which do not illuminate vice and make it viciously attractive by the brilliancy of its witty setting, fail to draw. The theater-goer of to-day acknowl- edges the vicious weftin the web of life, but he is no longer anxious to see it made the sole material of the dramatic tapestry. The reaction has set in, and the public say, “8in, if you must, but sin decently.” There is little prospect of the restoration of the classic drama. Our people have been taught to love color, and tbe{ will find it in melodrama cleansed of its blood- curdling realism, and in a reproduction of the romantic tinged with the classic. The future of the drama cannot be pre- dicted any more than the future of the feople. but there are many reasons for be- ieving that, in the drama of the future, music will play a most important part. The lyric drama has never been fairly tested, and it is not unlikely that there will be a direct ‘‘set’” in the current toward the lyric. It is not improbable that many changes will take place in the arrangement of the theater itself. When one remembers that in Shakespeare’s time the stage was occupied by a crowd of flip- pant flutterers, the dudesof the day, who brought their seats with them and whose chief amusement was found in guying the half-shaved men or pretty boys who played the role of women, and that the stage was bare of scenery, of setting, and comn- pare the ‘then” with ‘the ‘‘now,” it is not unreasonable to suppose that further changes will take place. It is probable that the orchestra will be re- moved to some other part of the building, and that the seats will be so arranced as to admit of an easy promenade, giving the audience an opportunity of relaxing their muscles without the necessity of investing in cloves. It may be found desirable to dispense with entr’acte or reduce it to its proper use, a pause in the recital. Prob- ably the stage will be used to present some single motive, intense in its interest and made attractive by a ha{-py representa- tion of all phases of human life, possibly the humorous preponderating. The tendency will be to abbreviate. e nsed to walk, now we run, later we shall sprint, and yet later we shall doubtless fly. Men will take their pleasures on the wing, and all things will move as man moves. Twenty - five years from now an hour and a half only will be given to a dramatic performance, but every member of a company will be required to present is parg with a skill ‘equal to that of the whole.. Stars will disappear and all performances will be given with the view of presenting the drama itself and not the eccentricities of the actor. Ensemble wilf be fully utilized, and the audience will see the picture as the author saw it. ‘WiLLiaM GREER Ne