more apposite to
indigenous tastes, its Sausage Machine--are thrown not only the wrongs
and hatreds of unhappy races but also the dear traditions of birth and
blood and family ties and pride of country, to emerge in a uniform
pattern without a past.

For his plot, Mr. ZANGWILL relies upon a very stagy coincidence.
_Quixano_ falls in love with a young Russian girl who conducts a
Settlement Home in New York, and conquers her prejudice against his
race, only to find that she is the daughter of the very officer who
permitted the massacre at Kishineff in which _Quixano's_ family had
perished, and himself been wounded. In turn he naturally has his own
prejudices to conquer, and does so. But not till he has scared us with
the fear that he is going to be false to his theory of purification by
process of the Melting Pot.

Mr. WALKER WHITESIDE, who plays the part, was excellent in his quiet
moods, and when he was obliged to rant was no worse than other ranters.
The superb solidity of Mr. SASS as the Russian officer served as an
admirable foil to the mercurial methods of _Quixano_. Miss PHYLLIS RELPH
as the heroine mitigated the effect of her obvious sincerity by a bad
trick of showing her nice teeth. Mr. PERCEVAL CLARK, as a young American
millionaire, was pleasantly British. Humorous relief of a cosmopolitan
order was provided by the Irish brogue of Miss O'CONNOR; the broken
English of Miss GILLIAN SCAIFE; the Anglo-German of Mr. CLIFTON ALDERSON
who played very well as _Herr Pappelmeister_ (Kapellmeister to a New
York orchestra); and what I took to be the Yiddish of Miss INEZ BENSUSAN
as the aunt of the hero, a pathetic figure of an old lady with firm
views about the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath, and a pedantic habit of
celebrating with a false nose and other marks of hilarity the
anniversary of the escape of the Chosen People from a Persian pogram
twenty-five centuries ago.

It might seem from this long catalogue of humorists that frivolity was
the prevailing note of the play. But I can give assurances that this was
not so. The prevailing note was a high seriousness, culminating in the
last Act, when tedium supervened. I attribute my final depression in
part to the scene--a bird's-eye view of New York from the roof-garden of
the Settlement House. It was impossible to share _Quixano's_ spasm of
exaltation in the matter of the Melting Pot as he gazed on this very
indifferent example of scenic art.

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