a friend left in the
world--another ruined life. And in that act, also, Appelles' worshipped
boy, Nymphas, done to death by the mob, breathes out his last sigh in
his father's arms--one more failure. In the fifth act, Appelles himself
dies, and is glad to do it; he who so ignorantly rejoiced, only four
acts before, over the splendid present of an earthly immortality--the
very worst failure of the lot!

II

Now I approach my project. Here is the theatre list for Saturday, May 7,
1898, cut from the advertising columns of a New York paper:

(graphic here)

Now I arrive at my project, and make my suggestion. From the look of
this lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for
'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe that
life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing
serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for
'The Master of Palmyra.' You are neglecting a valuable side of your
life; presently it will be atrophied. You are eating too much mental
sugar; you will bring on Bright's disease of the intellect. You need a
tonic; you need it very much. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You
will not need to translate it; its story is as plain as a procession of
pictures.

I have made my suggestion. Now I wish to put an annex to it. And that
is this: It is right and wholesome to have those light comedies and
entertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. But
none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods;
they come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods
have their appetites--healthy and legitimate appetites--and there ought
to be some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought
to have one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of
population, and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford
it, she can support it. America devotes more time, labour, money and
attention to distributing literary and musical culture among the general
public than does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find her
neglecting what is possibly the most effective of all the breeders and
nurses and disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion--the
tragic stage. To leave that powerful agency out is to haul the
culture-wagon with a crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes which
only Shakespeare can set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeare
our