d not make her
entrance in an automobile, you felt that it was waiting outside.
Historians, interested in the French revolution, might get some
valuable sidelights from Miss Odette Tyler's idea of it. The actress
herself has an agreeable personality and considerable ability.

The other "star" to whom I have fitfully alluded--Miss Eugenie
Blair--has much vogue outside of New York. She came to the Murray Hill
Theater with a version of Wilkie Collins' much-abused "New Magdalen,"
which was called "Her Second Life." This being her life number two,
you felt a distinct sensation of relief that you were spared a glimpse
at lives numbers one and three. It was such a very crude performance
that I should not have dragged it into this record had it not been for
the fact that Miss Blair was part of the singular display of celestial
bodies that I have tried to indicate in this article. She is a weighty
actress corporeally, if not artistically, and poor _Mercy Merrick_
fared rather badly. This Wilkie Collins heroine has been neglected of
late, in favor of such base subterfuges as figures of the _Nancy
Stair_ caliber, but certain signs point to revivals of "The New
Magdalen," which as an emotional story has seldom been surpassed.
Compared with the pitiful puppet "romances" of to-day, this genuine
piece of throbbing fiction seems to be in distinctly another class.

Mr. Frank Keenan, with whose praiseworthy effort to emulate the
tactics of M. Antoine in Paris my readers are familiar, gave up the
Berkeley Lyceum ghost, unable to weather the storm and stress of
experiment. While admiring Mr. Keenan's energy, and appreciating the
little one-act bills that he offered with such rapid-transit celerity,
it is impossible to avoid deprecating the lack of logical foresight
that he manifested.

He trifled with our young affections, aroused our enthusiasm and
inspired in us the belief that a permanent institution was inevitable,
and then--quietly dropped out. In other walks of life, people who make
experiments have generally supplied themselves with the wherewithal to
wait while their schemes approach fruition. Rome was not built in a
day, but if the builders thereof had been actors, Rome never would
have been built at all! The actor, who is usually a singularly
unbalanced person, looks for immediate success, and can endure nothing
else.

Why Mr. Keenan should have expected to jump into a whirlwind of
instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothin