here was clean sawdust on the floor, and the spectators--one hundred of
them suffocatingly filled the hall--were provided only with wooden
benches, painted a vivid Paris green. These benches had been
thoughtfully selected, however, and were less excruciating to sit on
than you would suppose. There was, naturally, no balcony; a false
pitch-roof had been constructed of rough stable beams, from which hung
bannerets in a crying, carefully studied dissonance of strong color,
worthy of the barbaric Bakst. The proscenium arch was necessarily a
toylike affair, copied, you would say, from the _Guinol_ in the
Tuileries Gardens; and the curtain, for a final touch, looked
authentic--had almost certainly been acquired, at some expenditure of
thought and trouble, from a traveling Elks' Carnival. There was even a
false set of footlights to complete the masquerade; a row of oil lamps
with tin reflectors. It was all very restless and amusing--and
extravagantly make-believe....

Jimmy and I arrived just in time to squeeze down the single narrow
side-aisle and into our places in the fourth row. We had no opportunity
to glance about us or consult our broad-sheet programs, none to acquire
the proper mood of tense expectancy we later succumbed to, before the
lights were lowered and the curtain was rolled up in the true antique
style. "Gee!" muttered Jimmy, on my left, with involuntary dislike.
"Ah!" breathed a maiden, on my right, with entirely voluntary rapture.
Someone in the front row giggled, probably a cub reporter doing duty
that evening as a dramatic critic; but he was silenced by a sharp hiss
from the rear.

The cause for these significant reactions was the _mise en scene_ of the
tiny vacant stage. It consisted of three dead-black walls, a dead-black
ceiling, and a dead-black floor-cloth. In the back wall there was a
high, narrow crimson door with a black knob. A tall straight-legged
table and one straight high-backed chair, both lacquered in crimson,
were the only furniture, except for a slender crimson-lacquered perch,
down right, to which was chained a yellow, green and crimson macaw. And
through the crimson door presently entered--undulated, rather--a
personable though poisonous young woman in a trailing robe of vivid
yellow and green.

The play that followed, happily a brief one, was called--as Jimmy and I
learned from our programs at its conclusion--"Polly." It consisted of a
monologue delivered by the poisonous young woman