every one of you who reads this essay will have a
brother, or a son, or a friend who went to see _Sybil_ forty-three
times and _The Girl from Utah_ seventy-six. Twenty years from now, as
he sits before the open fire, the mere mention of _They Wouldn't
Believe Me_ will cause the tears to course down his cheeks as he pats
the pate of his infant son or daughter and weepingly describes the
never-to-be-forgotten fascination of Julia Sanderson, the (in the then
days) unattainable agility of Donald Brian.

In no other form of theatrical entertainment is the appeal to softness
so direct. The man who attends a performance of a musical farce goes
in a good mood, usually with a couple of friends, or possibly with
_the_ girl. If he has dined well and his digestion is in working order
and he is young enough, the spell of the lights and the music is
irresistible to his receptive and impressionable nature. There are
those young men, of course, who are constant attendants because of the
altogether too wonderful hair of the third girl from the right in the
front row. Others succumb to the dental perfection of the prima donna
or to the shapely legs of the soubrette. All of us, I am almost proud
to admit, at some time or other, are subject to the contagion. I well
remember the year in which I considered myself as a possible suitor
for the hand of Della Fox. Photographs and posters of this deity
adorned my walls. I was an assiduous collector of newspaper clippings
referring to her profoundly interesting activities, although my
sophistication had not reached the stage where I might appeal to
Romeike for assistance. The mere mention of Miss Fox's name was
sufficient cause to make me blush profusely. Eventually my father was
forced to take steps in the matter when I began, in a valiant effort
to summon up the spirit of the lady's presence, to disturb the early
morning air with vocal assaults on _She Was a Daisy_, which, you will
surely remember, was the musical gem of _The Little Trooper_. Here are
the words of the refrain:

"She was a daisy, daisy, daisy!
Driving me crazy, crazy, crazy!
Helen of Troy and Venus were to her cross-eyed crones!
She was dimpled and rosy, rosy, rosy!
Sweet as a posy, posy, posy!
How I doted upon her, my Ann Jane Jones!"

You will admit, I think, at first glance, the superior literary
quality of these lines; you will perceive at once to what immeasurably
higher class of art they belong