ose we know--we,
the Parthenon audience, I mean--what our feelings are on the art of
acting--the art of play-writing."

"I shouldn't like to have to define my feelings at a moment's notice."

"One must make a beginning, and then work up gradually to the
definition."

"For instance----"

"Well, for instance, there's something that people call realism
nowadays."

"My father has his ideas on what's called realism," Phyllis laughed.
"'Realism in painting is the ideal with a smudge.'"

"I should like to hear what you think of it?"

He also laughed sympathetically.

"Oh, I only venture to think that realism is the opposite to reality."

"And, so far as I can gather, your definition is not wanting in
breadth--no, nor in accuracy. Sentimentality is the opposite to
sentiment."

"That is a point on which we agreed a moment ago. My father says
that sentiment is a strong man's concealment of what he feels, while
sentimentality is a weak man's expression of what he doesn't feel."

"And the Parthenon audience--you and I--laugh at the latter--that is,
because we have practiced some form of athletics. The bicycle has given
its _coup de grace_ to sentimentality. That man over there with the head
and face like a lion's, and that woman whose face is nature illuminated,
have long ago recognized the shallowness of sentimentality--the depths
of sentiment. We could not imagine either of them striking a false note.
They have been the teachers of this generation--the generation to which
you belong. Great Heavens! to think that for so many years human passion
should be banished from art, though every line of Shakspere is tremulous
with passion! Why, the word was absolutely banished; it was regarded as
impure."

"I know that--I was at a boarding school. The preceptresses regarded as
impure everything that is human."

"Whereas, just the opposite is the case?"

"I didn't say that, Mr. Courtland."

"You could scarcely say it. I am only beginning to think it, and I have
lived among savages for years. That man with the lion's face has not
feared to deal with passion. All actors who have lived since Garrick
have never gone further than to illustrate passion in the hands of a
man; but that lion-man, whose stage we are now standing on, shows us
not the passion in the hands of a man, but the man in the hands of the
passion. The man who tears the passion to tatters is the robustious
periwig-pated fellow; the actor, who shows us the man