nted sailors, and lured them on the rocks to their doom,
from the day the siren sang till the hour the Lorelei sang no more. The
scene with the baby mermaid, when she swims with the pretty creature on
her back, is irresistible. Why are our managers so mechanical? Why do
they flatten out at the moment the fancy of the tiniest reader of
fairy-tales begins to be alive? Most of Annette's support were stage
dummies. Neptune was a lame Santa Claus with cotton whiskers.

But as for the bearing of the film on this chapter: the human figure is
within its rights whenever it is as free from self-consciousness as was
the life-radiating Annette in the heavenly clear waters of Bermuda. On
the other hand, Neptune and his pasteboard diadem and wooden-pointed
pitchfork, should have put on his dressing-gown and retired. As a toe
dancer in an alleged court scene, on land, Annette was a mere simperer.
Possibly Pavlowa as a swimmer in Bermuda waters would have been as much
of a mistake. Each queen to her kingdom.

For living, moving sculpture, the human eye requires a costume and a part
in unity with the meaning of that particular figure. There is the Greek
dress of Mordkin in the arrow dance. There is Annette's breast covering
of shells, and wonderful flowing mermaid hair, clothing her as the
midnight does the moon. The new costume freedom of the photoplay allows
such limitation of clothing as would be probable when one is honestly in
touch with wild nature and preoccupied with vigorous exercise. Thus the
cave-man and desert island narratives, though seldom well done, when
produced with verisimilitude, give an opportunity for the native human
frame in the logical wrappings of reeds and skins. But those who in a
silly hurry seek excuses, are generally merely ridiculous, like the
barefoot man who is terribly tender about walking on the pebbles, or the
wild man who is white as celery or grass under a board. There is no short
cut to vitality.

A successful literal use of sculpture is in the film Oil and Water.
Blanche Sweet is the leader of the play within a play which occupies the
first reel. Here the Olympians and the Muses, with a grace that we fancy
was Greek, lead a dance that traces the story of the spring, summer, and
autumn of life. Finally the supple dancers turn gray and old and die, but
not before they have given us a vision from the Ionian islands. The play
might have been inspired from reading Keats' Lamia, but is probably
deriv