Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

“Stay with her!” echoed Huldah, tossing up her head with a peculiar, free motion which belonged to her in times of excitement. “Stay with her? I don’t want to stay with your wife. I’ve got my work to do. I don’t spy on nobody – no matter how bad things looks for ’em.”

She had spoken the latter words in an undertone, as she gathered the drooping girl and her belongings upon a capable arm. Now, as a heavy, drumming roar became audible, she added, in excitement: “Land sakes! There’s a train. No, it can’t be no train; but for sure them’s engines out on the Magdalena Branch! I’ve got to fly ’round and git supper for them train crews. All the boys o’ the Magdalena Branch eats with me.” She made as though to release her charge, saying sharply: “I guess I ain’t hardly time to take your wife acrost – let alone hangin’ ’round to chat with her.”

“Hi, colonel! That big trunk of yours bu’st open when we tried to get it off the freight,” announced a man’s voice in the doorway. “Want to come over and see to it?”

This was the help that Huldah could have asked for. The man addressed as “colonel” turned from one to the other with a worried look. “I guess I’ve got to,” he replied to the brakeman. “How bad is it?”

“I didn’t see it,” returned the other, “but Billy said it was plumb bu’st, and the things fallin’ out. It’ll have to be roped, I guess.”

As the men hurried away in the direction of the station, Huldah turned briskly and tightened her arm about the girl. “Now, honey,” she whispered. And they hastened across the straggling red mud road in the face of a shower whose large drops were beginning to pelt down like hail. Aunt Huldah gathered up her petticoats and ran. “I’ll have to git them winders shut,” she panted. “I hope to gracious Manuelita’s got the sense to shut ’em in the other house.”

The roaring of engines which Huldah had mentioned as on the Magdalena Branch came more distinctly now. “Looks like there must be three or four of ’em – engines – one right behind t’other,” the old woman muttered. “I’ll jest git you fixed comfortable over here, honey, and shut them winders, an’ then I must run back.”

But when she would have done so, the girl clung to her with shaking hands. “Oh, don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “Don’t let that man know where I am. Hide me.”

“He ain’t your husband, then?” hazarded Huldah.

“No – no – no!” moaned the girl. “My husband’s a freight conductor on this road – Billy Gaines. You’ve seen him. He told me about you and the Wagon Tire House – about your having a wagon tire in front of it to beat on to call to meals. I expect he’s eaten many a meal here. He might come now; and then if he saw me – and that man – and – oh, hide me!”

Aunt Huldah let the head rest upon her shoulder, the shamed face hidden. “Who is this feller they call colonel, child?” she asked, gently.

“He owned – the house we lived in – in El Paso,” came the muffled explanation. “He’s rich, and – and very refined.”

“I know a place that’s full of jest such refined fellers,” muttered Huldah, angrily.

“Billy didn’t seem to love the baby as he – as – and Colonel Emerson is very fond of children – he’s devoted to my baby – or I thought he was. And he said that it was cause enough for me to leave Billy. And if I should leave him – if I should leave Billy – if I should get a divorce from him – he said – Colonel Emerson said – ”

“Don’t tell me what he said, honey child,” urged Huldah. “What’d he do? Where’s your baby?”

Oh, then the poor little mother clung with strangling sobs to the stronger, older woman. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “He got me all these nice things – ain’t my clothes awfully pretty? – and he promised we’d bring the baby with us. He says he’s taking me to his mother, and that I can stay there until I get my divorce – because, you know, Billy has treated me awfully mean, and he don’t care – Billy – he don’t care a thing on earth about me nor the baby any more.”

She reiterated these last words with a piteous look of entreaty into the kind gray eyes bent upon her, repeated them as a little child repeats a lesson which has been laboriously taught to it. Huldah looked at her with infinite pity. “Where’s your baby?” she repeated.

“That’s what scares me!” cried the wife of Billy Gaines. “He said – Colonel Emerson said – when he met me at the station, and he hadn’t sent for the baby like he promised to – that he was going to have some man that he knew go and get the boy and take it to his mother’s house, but that it wouldn’t do for it to travel with us, because we could be traced by it. I” – the pretty lips trembled – “I never was away from my baby a night in my life. I don’t know if anybody knows where to get his little night drawers. He always wears a little sack, extra, at night, because he’s a great one for throwing his arms out and getting the covers off them – ”

She was running on like a crazed thing, with these little fond details, when Huldah Sarvice’s strong voice interrupted her. “Thank God!” said the old woman, heaving a mighty sigh of relief. “If you’re a good mother, you’re worth savin’. I’m goin’ right over now an’ telegraft to your husband.”

“Oh, no! Don’t do that!” cried the other. “He’ll be killed. You mustn’t. Don’t. He’ll be killed!”

“Killed!” snorted Huldah. Hers was the rough-and-ready code of the West. “Killed – and serve him right!”

“I don’t mean Colonel Emerson,” remonstrated the frantic girl. “Sometimes I think he’s a bad man – an awful man – anyhow, he’ll just have to stand it if anything happens. It’s Billy I’m thinking about. The colonel has shot three or four men – he’ll kill my poor Billy – ”

Huldah smiled to herself in the gathering darkness. The problem was becoming easier and easier. But the girl’s strangled, sobbing voice went on: “And I couldn’t bear to see Billy. I don’t dare to have him see me when he knows about this. I can’t face him. If you say you’re going to telegraph to him, I’ll run right straight to Colonel Emerson and get him to take me away somewhere.”

Huldah puckered her lips – had she been a man she would have whistled. She saw no way but to go with the girl and fight it out with her tempter. “Come,” she said, a little roughly for Huldah. “I’ll go back with you.”

She whom the old woman would have saved turned like a hunted thing, as to elude her benefactress. Huldah clung to her arm, and they struggled thus to the doorway. Here the thunder of engines toward Magdalena once more arrested the attention of the proprietor of the Wagon Tire House. It had increased to a deafening uproar; the rain fell like bullets; and even as they drew back, frightened, there was no street to be seen – only a flood of swirling yellow water, running like a tail race between the lodging rooms and the little eating house. “My Lord!” groaned Huldah. “I might ’a’ knowed ’twa’n’t engines. Hit’s a cloudburst, above – the big arroyo’s up.”

It was true. The red gash which through nine-tenths of the year lay dry and yawning beside the tracks of the little Magdalena Branch railway was brimmed with the same tide which swept the street. And down it, as they looked, came a wall of writhing, tormented water, nearly five feet high.

There had been a cloudburst in the mountains above, whence came such trickle as fed the arroyo in the dry season. Twice before had this thing happened, and the little eating house stood upon stilts of cottonwood logs to be above the flood line, while the lodging house was on higher ground.

The watching women saw the flood reach the railway track, beat upon its embankment with upraised, clinched hands, tear at it with outspread fingers in an access of fury, wrench up the rails yet bolted to the ties, and fling them forward on its crest as it plunged on. The two little houses, standing isolated from the town and nearer to the railroad tracks than any other, were now in an open waste of water, the current sweeping swiftly between them, an eddy lapping in their back yards.

As Huldah saw Manuelita’s frightened face at a window of the Wagon Tire House, she made a trumpet of her plump hands and shouted: “Don’t you be scared, Manuelita – hear? Keep up the fire, and make a b’iler of coffee. I’ll be over soon’s I can git thar!”

Billy Gaines’ wife looked down at the water with relief. “He can’t come across that,” she murmured.

“No, he can’t,” agreed Aunt Huldah. “An’ you come an’ lay down on my bed. Slip off your shoes, an’ loosen your clothes, but don’t undress. This house is safe, I reckon; but no knowin’ what might happen.”

All that night Huldah Sarvice worked, with the strength of a man and the knowledge of a seasoned frontiers-woman. The injured were brought to the lodging house or the eating house, just as it happened. When a hastily improvised boat came to their aid, she went in it over to see that some refreshment was prepared for the workers; and later, when the sullen flood receded to a languid swell, she paddled back and forth on foot, her petticoats gathered in one sweep of her arm, and whatever was necessary to carry held fast with the other.

“You’ll get your death, Aunt Huldah,” remonstrated the agent, when she had struggled across to the station to send a telegram to Billy Gaines.

“I reckon not,” she returned, with twinkling eye. “Seems like you can’t drown me. I’ve been flooded out six times; twict at El Captain, once at Blowout and now three times here; and I ain’t drownded yet. This is a good long telegraft that I’m a-sendin’; but I reckon the railroad won’t grudge it to me.”

“You bet they won’t,” returned the boy, heartily, as he addressed himself to his key. “I’ll add a message of my own to a fellow I know at El Paso, and get him to hunt Billy up if he’s on duty to-night.”

Huldah beamed. “That’s awful good of you,” she returned; “but if you had seen that little woman over there a runnin’ from one window to another, a wringin’ her hands and carryin’ on so that I’m ’most afraid to leave her alone, you’d be glad to do it.”

As she splashed back to her tired helpers and the injured at the Wagon Tire House, the old woman muttered to herself: “He’s a good boy. It’s better to have good friends than to be rich;” and never reflected for an instant that no personal benefit had been conferred upon herself in the matter.

With the simple wisdom of a good woman who knows well the human heart, Huldah set poor Louise Gaines to attending upon the worst injured of the flood sufferers, and took her promptly in to see the one corpse which so far had been found floating in an eddy after the waters receded a little. It was that of a young Mexican girl from the village above. The little fair woman went down on her knees beside the stretcher. “Oh, I wish it was me!” she cried. “Why couldn’t it have been me? She’s young, and I expect she wanted to live – why didn’t God take me?”

“Now, now,” remonstrated Aunt Huldah, with a touch of wholesome sternness. “I didn’t bring you in here to carry on about your own troubles – that’s selfish. I brung you to make this poor girl look fit to be laid away. You can do it better’n I can, and there’s nobody else for to do it. Likely her folks is all drownded, too.”

And Billy Gaines’ wife rose up and wiped her eyes, and went to work in something of the spirit that Huldah had hoped.

It was five o’clock in the gray of the morning when the wrecking train from El Paso came through; and Billy Gaines was aboard it. The poor little wife had had attacks of hysteric terror all night long at the thought of his coming; and now she lay exhausted and half sleeping upon the lounge in the dining room. Huldah herself felt a little qualm of fear as she opened the kitchen door to the tall figure buttoned in the big ulster. For the first time, she wondered where the man Emerson was, and hoped that he had taken the one train which left Socorro going northward, just before the flood struck them. But the hope was a faint one; more likely he was up in the town, cut off from them temporarily by the water which still ran between; and when he and Billy Gaines met, she doubted not that there would be another bloody reckoning such as the West knows well.

If she had doubted, her questions would have been answered when she looked into the frank gray eyes of the man who met her, a trifle stern and very resolute. “I’ve come for my wife,” he said, breathing a little short, “and if Jim Emerson’s in the house, I want to see him.”

“Come in here,” said the old woman, drawing the newcomer into a small section of chaos which was generally known as the pantry. “I remember you now, an’ I guess you’re a decenter man than the run of ’em; but I want to have a word with you before you go in to that poor girl. You see, I want to be sure that you’ve looked on both sides of it. You pass all right among the men – I hear you well spoke of – but how many things can you ricollect that you’ve done that are jest as bad as what she’s done?”

“Plenty,” said Billy Games, almost with impatience. “I understand, Aunt Huldah.”

“Mebby you do,” said the old woman; “but I want to be sure. Where was you when this poor little soul was left to herself – and that scoundrel?”

“I was over in Mexico on a six weeks’ hunting trip.”

“You was! Well, then, after all, who done this thing – who’s really to blame?”

“I am – you bet,” came the deep-voiced answer. “I don’t hold it against you a bit, Aunt Huldah; but you’re working on the wrong trail. You think you’ve got a great big job ahead of you trying to make me see this thing right. But I’ll remind you that it’s eight hours from El Paso here – eight night hours – and your telegram was pretty complete. You left the man out; and so will I – until I meet him.” The firm jaw squared itself heavily; and Huldah sighed as she realized that the law of blood for honor must be met.

The man had carried one arm almost as though it were injured; and she now glanced down at it as he moved it and fumbled in the folds of his big overcoat. His voice softened beautifully. “I’ve got something here,” he said, “that ought to show you that I know and understand, and am going to behave myself.”

He opened his great cloak and showed, lying upon his breast asleep, a baby of about two years old, who stirred, put up a wandering little hand and murmured: “Daddy,” as he settled himself for a longer nap.

“Bless his heart!” murmured Huldah, in the richest tones of her strong, heartsome voice. She wiped the tears from her eyes on a corner of the check apron. “I guess you’ll do, Billy. You seem to have the makin’s of a tol’able decent feller in you. You’ve got the only medicine right there that your poor little, half crazy wife needs.” And she pushed him toward the door of the deserted dining room.

There was a long, agonized cry: “O – o – oh, Billy!” Then the big voice talked brokenly and gently for a time, choking sobs interrupting it; and Huldah could hear, at first, the thin, shrill terror of the woman’s tones, very sharp and pleading; finally an eloquent silence.

She glanced in to see Billy Gaines sitting with what she called “both of his children – for the little woman’s ’most as much of a baby as her boy” – asleep; the mother with her head upon his shoulder, while the child lay in the laps of both of them.

“Lord, but that’s a sight for sore eyes!” she ruminated, as she lifted the coffee boiler from the stove and sent Manuelita to lie down and get a rest.

“But there’s the colonel,” she pursued. “There’s goin’ to be awful times when him and Billy Gaines meets.” Then she smiled at herself and went on: “Jest listen to a old woman like me tryin’ to tell how it ort to come out. We’re all God’s children. I reckon the colonel’s His child” – she seemed to have a little doubt upon this point – “an’ I reckon God’ll take care of him.”

As if in answer to her half-spoken thought, there came the tramp of stumbling feet, somebody beat upon the door, and a voice called: “Mrs. Sarvice! Aunt Huldah! We’ve just found another body over by the railroad tracks. Can we bring him in here, or shall we take it over to the other house?”

Huldah hurried out, to turn down the blanket they had drawn over the stark form and look upon the dead gambler’s face. “Carry him to the lodgin’ house, pore feller,” she said, gently.

God had taken care of the colonel.

ELUSION

 
CLEAVAGE of sea and sky,
Ever elusive line,
Though I follow it far,
Far as the Ultimate Isles,
Never it seems more nigh, —
Shifting shadow and shine, —
Dim as a distant star
That beckons and beguiles
 
 
Dawn-dream of my heart,
Dusk-dream of my soul,
Though I follow thee long
Into the night’s deep shades,
Never attained thou art,
Never I gain the goal;
Thou art like a song
That ever and ever evades.
 

Clinton Scollard.

LONDON’S STAGNANT THEATRICAL SEASON
BY ALAN DALE

London has begun to howl sensationally about the American Theatrical Syndicate, and to discuss the possibilities of its invasion of London.

Of course this is the warm season, when snake stories and sea-serpent legends are distinctly in order. Therefore the machinations of the American Theatrical Syndicate have made good reading, and plenty of space has been given to the subject. One journalist has suggested that the playwrights of England and the United States form a league, destined to break up the trust, very much after the style of the Authors’ Society in France. “Why should they not form themselves into a society,” asks this writer, “for the protection not only of their own interests, but of the interests of the theater, of the interests of the actors, and of the interests of the public? As the trust snaps up an actor when once his reputation is established, so it deals with dramatists. Once a dramatist has made a mark, the trust practically buys him up; that is to say, it makes him an offer outright for all his work to come. That is part of the infernal system.”

All of which is quite good, and true, and logical. It reads remarkably well, with just the spice of wholesome plaint that one loves to excavate. After a month of continuous theater-going in London, however – from the Strand to Piccadilly Circus, and from Piccadilly Circus to Shaftesbury Avenue – I can’t help reflecting that if the syndicate or any syndicate had been let loose in London this year, with the option of cornering everything in sight, the fact remains that there is scarcely a production in London worth transplanting. Furthermore, the fear that an American invasion would deal a death-blow to London art seems absurd. I haven’t found any art to death-blow.

Nearly everything that London writers have said of the syndicate is true, and, perhaps, not stringent enough, but – with an accent on the “but” – how it could possibly harm London goodness only knows. Never has theatrical entertainment in the English metropolis been at a lower ebb. A few of its features will be done in New York this year, and they will prove exactly what I have said. English playwrights seem to be suffering from too much money, for they apparently lack the stimulus to struggle. That money may, of course, have been contributed by American managers, who buy “pig-in-a-poke” fashion, but if that be so, there are not enough “independent” playwrights to form a society. As for leaguing themselves with American playwrights – well, puzzle: find the American playwrights.

The saddest case of perverted humor I have sampled in a very long time is that of J. M. Barrie’s play – or whatever it chooses to call itself – entitled “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire,” at the Duke of York’s Theater. Barrie must, indeed, be very “comfortably fixed,” for no other condition could conceivably call forth such a miserable guy on the theater-going public as this “three-act page from a daughter’s diary.” Naturally it has attracted a good deal of attention, for Barrie has done noble things in his day, and “The Little Minister” still lives as a monumentally delightful achievement. But “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is a “satire” built on such a weak and irritating foundation that it is difficult to consider it except with contempt – which is a cruel way of looking at Barrie.

The heroine, or central figure, or point of attack, in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” is a romantic young girl, who has been to so many “matinées” that she has grown to look upon life as a theatrical performance. At first you think that Amy Grey is going to be extremely amusing, as she chats satirically of her life, with her boon companion – another matinée fiend. Amy’s father and mother return from India after an absence of a good many years, and Barrie plunges into a plot.

The stagestruck girl has always heard that when a woman visits a man’s rooms at midnight there are illicit relations that should be immediately broken up. She hears her mother promise to call upon Stephen Rollo at midnight, and assumes, with much girlish glee, that her mother needs rescuing. The entire motive of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” lurks in Barrie’s effort to be funny around this cruelly topsy-turvy, and rather nauseating, idea.

The principal act occurs in the “man’s rooms” – with the girl, the mother and the man. Barrie, in a positive ecstasy of ghoulish “humor,” allows the mother to understand the girl’s idea. She clamors for her daughter’s love, and believes that the best way to secure it will be to feign guilt, so that the girl can “rescue” her. This she does. Amy believes that she has saved her mamma from a horrible fate – mamma caters diligently to that suggestion – and the play ends with Amy’s betrothal to the man in the case.

In this play Barrie has violated sheer decency of sentiment. It is all very well to shower satire upon the matinée girl – she can stand it, and has stood it full many a time and oft – but to mix her up in the imaginary adultery of her own mother – and as a joke, saving the mark! – gives one such a disagreeable shock, that recovery from its effects is quite out of the question. To be even more delicately humorous, Barrie might have introduced the grandmother under similarly suspicious circumstances.

It is all very well to write caviare, but the caviare must be fresh and not putrid. Barrie’s “humor” in “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” has the taint of decay – as it had the germ of acute dyspepsia in that atrocity produced in New York under the title of “Little Mary.” Real humor attacks hereditary sentiment with delicacy, and a certain amount of timidity. To completely realize this you have but to study George Bernard Shaw, who, while he flouts a thousand traditions, and is rarely amusing unless he is flouting, does so with a keen appreciation of what he is doing. The redoubtable George may even scoff occasionally at filial sentiment, but he would never dredge humor from the imaginary sin of a mother, used as a joke to please her own stagestruck daughter. At the close of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” one wondered what Amy, after her marriage to the man in the case, would think of the maudlin situation. And this, please your grace, has been announced as Barrie’s crowning fantasy! Fortunately, we have “Peter Pan” to hear from in New York. Not having seen that, I pin my faith to it, for I want to hold on to Barrie a bit longer, in spite of “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire.”

This “page from a daughter’s diary” was preceded by a sketch, also by Barrie, entitled “Pantaloon,” and programed as “a plea for an ancient family.” There is no need to discuss this one-act trifle, with its pathos and bathos, in extraordinary blend, and no single salient idea to carry it through. The elopement of Harlequin and Columbine, with the jilting of Clown, and the distress of Pantaloon may perchance be a “plea for an ancient family,” and as there are all sorts of pleas, you are possibly allowed to pay your money and take your choice.

It was Ellen Terry who played Alice, in the “Sit-by-the-Fire” affair. Poor Ellen Terry! To my mind it was sad and disheartening. Why should an actress who has had such a joyous career as that which fell to Miss Terry’s lot, elect, in her ultra maturity, to play a bad part in a bad play – and not too well? There is tragedy in this continued, and – I should say – unnecessary service. Probably there are still roles that Miss Terry might acceptably play, but as the forty-year-old mother in this wretched piece one could but feel sorry for her – and sorry for those who saw her. I have heard that Miss Ethel Barrymore plays the part in the United States. I can’t believe it until I see it.

Miss Irene Vanbrugh – you remember her in “The Gay Lord Quex” – was the matinée girl, with much force. There are flashes of humor in the part, and Miss Vanbrugh made the most of them. For the benefit of those who may see “Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire” on the American side of the pond, the rest of the cast was made up of Aubrey Smith, A. E. Mathews, Kenneth Douglas, Lettice Fairfax – who was once in Augustin Daly’s New York company – Dora Hole, Edith Craig and Hilda Trevelyan.

Always at this time of year there is an influx of foreign actresses into London. They come; they are seen; but they never conquer. They must be awfully tired of it, for history has such a sad way of repeating itself. This year, however, one French actress has made a good deal of a stir, but under such distinctly new conditions that the stir is quite intelligible. This young woman, Madame Simone Le Bargy, of whom I wrote you last year when I reviewed “Le Retour de Jerusalem” from Paris, was brought to London by George Alexander, the actor-manager of the St. James Theater, not for a season “on her own,” but as his leading lady, and in English, too!

A French actress in English! Could anything be more unusual? Sarah Bernhardt, who has been cavorting around the English-speaking world for portentous yet vulgar fractions of a century, never managed to acquire even a suspicion of English; Rêjane, who has done London and New York pretty thoroughly, would have an artistic fit at the idea of juggling with English, at her time of life; Jane Hading, Jeanne Granier and others are quite willing to play anywhere, but it must be in French.

Madame Simone Le Bargy played the leading rôle in “The Man of the Moment,” at the St. James Theater, and was duly and unselfishly boomed by Mr. George Alexander, as “of the Gymnase Théâtre, Paris. Her first appearance in England.” The piece was an adaptation, by Harry Melvill, of “L’Adversaire,” by Alfred Capus and Emmanuel Arène. The English actor-manager was a wise man in his London generation. He had a weak play, most indifferently adapted, but he had Le Bargy, and for a while she caught the town.

While English leading ladies must have fumed at Alexander’s neglect of “home talent,” Madame Le Bargy showed that it is quite possible not only to play with grace and facility in a foreign language, but actually to prove more intelligible than a good many London actresses who flatter themselves that they speak good English. Madame Le Bargy’s English was an absolute revelation. Naturally it had an accent – a delightful one – and Paris was stamped on everything she said, but compared with Mrs. Fiske in New York, or Miss Ashwell in London, Madame Le Bargy’s diction was wonderful. Every word she uttered was intelligible. She rattled off various speeches almost as quickly as she might have done in French, but never once did their meaning miscarry. I’ve seen all sorts of foreign actresses waylay the English language – Modjeska and Janauschek being in the list – but seldom have such results as those given by this little, thin, nervous Frenchwoman been attained.

Oddly enough, it is said that Madame Le Bargy had never been in London before, and that she had acquired English in France. In which case, I would suggest that half a dozen popular New York actresses – I won’t mention names – should sail for France at an early date, and see if they could learn English there. It is as difficult to acquire in London as it is in New York.

“The Man of the Moment” was saved from rapid extinction by the little Gymnase actress. It had four acts, through two of which you could have slept comfortably while various alleged French characters sat round drawing rooms and talked endlessly about nothing whatsoever. Then, in the third act, you learned that Marianne Darlay, the wife of Maurice, had been lured to infidelity by a dark gentleman named Langlade. As she still loved her husband, and didn’t love Langlade, this little escapade failed entirely to interest. The “great scene” occurred when the wife gave herself away to the husband, and the play ended with a vista of divorce. Divorce, in real life, may be a serenely satisfactory settlement of domestic wrangles, but on the stage its unromantic practicality has not yet succeeded in appealing, except in farce. “The Man of the Moment” had no dramatic action, and no movement of any sort. You were unable to sympathize with the woman, or to feel much interest in the man. In fact, “The Man of the Moment” must have been so-called because he had none.

Capus in French is always exhilarating. The “chatter” is refreshing and genuinely amusing, but translated into English, it seemed extremely dull. Mr. Melvill did poor Capus into the sort of language that is encountered in burlesque at little Mr. Weber’s music hall. The result was fatal. Yet, in addition to Madame Le Bargy’s very excellent work, there was George Alexander, whose efforts were most praiseworthy. He seemed perfectly satisfied to take what was assuredly second place in the cast. “The Man of the Moment” was beautifully put on, as is every production at the St. James Theater. George Alexander is one of the few London actors who have not been to the United States within the last decade – in fact, he has never been, except as a member of Irving’s forces, many years ago – and the abstinence seems to agree with him. He does more, and he does it more luxuriously, than the traveling English actor whom we have seen so often. Perhaps it is true, after all, that a rolling stone gathers no moss – though I should hate to believe that there could possibly be anything in a popular proverb.

While one little foreign actress was capturing London by her clever manipulation of London’s language, others were not as happy. Eleanora Duse’s season at the Messrs. Shubert’s new Waldorf Theater, in the new street called Aldwych, on the Strand, must have been very discouraging to the haughty lady herself. In fact, it is asserted that she will never again appear in England. Half-filled houses are something that must be distressing to the “artistic temperament,” and Duse played to a most elongated series of them. Few people seemed to know that she was in London. In New York we, in our occasionally provincial appreciation of an actress whom we are unable to understand – and probably because we can’t understand her – go into ecstasies over Duse, and pack the theater to overflowing. London is too sophisticated. Duse made no stir at all this time. Even the critics gave her but merely polite attention. Possibly in English she could charm the English-speaking world. But, save in the case of Madame Simone Le Bargy, nobody seems to think that worth while. Perhaps it isn’t.