Margaret Anglin Produces _As You Like It_ 318

THE MODERN COMPOSERS AT A GLANCE 329

FOOTNOTES 330

INDEX 331

Some of these essays have appeared in "The Smart Set,"
"Reedy's Mirror," "Vanity Fair," "The Chronicle," "The
Theatre," "The Bellman," "The Musical Quarterly," "Rogue,"
"The New York Press," and "The New York Globe." In their
present form, however, they have undergone considerable
redressing.

In Defence of Bad Taste

"_It is a painful thing, at best, to live up to one's
bricabric, if one has any; but to live up to the bricabric
of many lands and of many centuries is a strain which no
wise man would dream of inflicting upon his constitution._"

Agnes Repplier.

In Defence of Bad Taste

In America, where men are supposed to know nothing about matters of
taste and where women have their dresses planned for them, the
household decorator has become an important factor in domestic life.
Out of an even hundred rich men how many can say that they have had
anything to do with the selection or arrangement of the furnishings
for their homes? In theatre programs these matters are regulated and
due credit is given to the various firms who have supplied the myriad
appeals to the eye; one knows who thought out the combinations of
shoes, hats, and parasols, and one knows where each separate article
was purchased. Why could not some similar plan of appreciation be
followed in the houses of our very rich? Why not, for instance, a card
in the hall something like the following:

_This house was furnished and decorated according
to the taste of Marcel of the Dilly-Billy Shop_

or

_We are living in the kind of house Miss Simone
O'Kelly thought we should live in. The
decorations are pure Louis XV and
the furniture is authentic._

It is not difficult, of course, to differentiate the personal from the
impersonal. Nothing clings so ill to the back as borrowed finery and I
have yet to find the family which has settled itself fondly and
comfortably in chairs which were a part of some one else's aesthetic
plan. As a matter of fact many of our millionaires would be more at
home in an atmosphere concocted from the ingredients of plain pine
tables and blanket-covered