cted one instantly unfolded his manuscript. "I will just read--"

"No, no!" we interposed. "Tell us about it--give us the general drift.
We never can follow anything read to us."

The other looked incredulous, but he was not master of the situation,
and he resigned himself to the secondary pleasure of sketching the paper
he would so much rather have read.

"Why, you know what an inveterate vaudeville-goer I have always been?"

We nodded. "We know how you are always trying to get us to neglect the
masterpieces of our undying modern dramatists, on the legitimate stage,
and go with you to see the ridiculous stunts you delight in."

"Well, it comes to the same thing. I am an inveterate vaudeville-goer,
for the simple reason that I find better acting in the vaudeville, and
better drama, on the whole, than you ever get, or you generally get, on
your legitimate stage. I don't know why it is so very legitimate. I have
no doubt but the vaudeville, or continuous variety performance, is the
older, the more authentic form of histrionic art. Before the Greek
dramatists, or the longer-winded Sanskrit playwrights, or the
exquisitely conventionalized Chinese and Japanese and Javanese were
heard of, it is probable that there were companies of vaudeville artists
going about the country and doing the turns that they had invented
themselves, and getting and giving the joy that comes of voluntary and
original work, just as they are now. And in the palmiest days of the
Greek tragedy or the Roman comedy, there were, of course, variety shows
all over Athens and Rome where you could have got twice the amusement
for half the money that you would at the regular theatres. While the
openly wretched and secretly rebellious actors whom Euripides and
Terence had cast for their parts were going through roles they would
never have chosen themselves, the wilding heirs of art at the vaudeville
were giving things of their own imagination, which they had worked up
from some vague inspiration into a sketch of artistic effect. No manager
had foisted upon them his ideals of 'what the people wanted,' none had
shaped their performance according to his own notion of histrionics.
They had each come to him with his or her little specialty, that would
play fifteen or twenty minutes, and had, after trying it before him, had
it rejected or accepted in its entirety. Then, author and actor in one,
they had each made his or her appeal to the public."

"There were no