happy; but they are not so bad,
after all, as trained dogs. They were followed by three 'Artistic
European Acrobats,' who compensated and consoled me for the seals, by
the exquisite ease with which they wrought the impossibilities of their
art, in the familiar sack-coats and top-coats of every day. I really
prefer tights and spangles, but I will not refuse impossibilities simply
because they are performed, as our diplomats are instructed to appear at
European courts, in the ordinary dress of a gentleman; it may even add a
poignancy to the pleasure I own so reluctantly.

"There came another pair of 'Singers and Dancers,' and then a 'Trick
Cyclist,' but really I cannot stand trick cycling, now that plain
cycling, glory be! has so nearly gone out. As soon as the cyclist began
to make his wheel rear up on its hind leg and carry him round the stage
in that posture, I went away. But I had had enough without counting him,
though I left the kalatechnoscope, with its shivering and shimmering
unseen. I had had my fill of pleasure, rich and pure, such as I could
have got at no legitimate theatre in town, and I came away opulently
content."

We reflected awhile before we remarked: "Then I don't see what you have
to complain of or to write of. Where does the decline of the vaudeville
come in?"

"Oh," the rejected contributor said, with a laugh, "I forgot that. It's
still so good, when compared with the mechanical drama of the legitimate
theatre, that I don't know whether I can make out a case against it now.
But I think I can, both in quality and quantity. I think the change
began insidiously to steal upon the variety show with the increasing
predominance of short plays. Since they were short, I should not have
minded them so much, but they were always so bad! Still, I could go out,
when they came on, and return for the tramp magician, or the comic
musician, who played upon joints of stovepipe and the legs of
reception-chairs and the like, and scratched matches on his two days'
beard, and smoked a plaintive air on a cigarette. But when the
'playlets' began following one another in unbroken succession, I did not
know what to do. Almost before I was aware of their purpose three of the
leading vaudeville houses threw off the mask, and gave plays that took
up the whole afternoon; and though they professed to intersperse the
acts with what they called 'big vaudeville,' I could not be deceived,
and I simply stopped going. When I want t