r; and that, I am afraid, is what
is happening to-day. A quieter note has crept into the whole thing, a
more facile technique; and if you develop technique you must develop it
at the expense of every one of those more robust and essential
qualities. The old entertainers captured us by deliberate unprovoked
assault on our attention. But to-day they do not take us by storm. They
woo us and win us slowly, by happy craft; and though your admiration is
finally wrung from you, it is technique you are admiring--nothing more.
All modern art--the novel, the picture, the play, the song--is dying of
technique.

I have only the very slightest acquaintance with those gorgeous
creatures--the L200 a week men--who top the bill to-day; only the
acquaintance of an occasional drink in their rooms. But I have known,
and still know, many of the rank and file, and delightful people they
are. As a boy of fifteen, I remember meeting, on a seaside front, a
member of a troupe then appearing called The Boy Guardsmen. He was a
sweet child. Fourteen years old he was, and he gave me cigarettes, and
he drank rum and stout, and was one of the most naive and cleanly
simple youths I ever met. He had an angelic trust in the good of
everything and everybody. He worshipped me because I bought him a book
he wanted. He believed that the ladies appearing in the same bill at his
hall were angels. He loved the manager of his troupe as a great-hearted
gentleman. He thought his sister was the most radiant and high-souled
girl that Heaven had yet sent to earth. And it was his business to sing,
twice nightly, some of the smuttiest songs I have heard on any stage.
Yet he knew exactly why the house laughed, and what portions of the
songs it laughed at. He knew that the songs went because they were
smutty, yet such was his innocence that he could not understand why smut
should not be laughed at. He was a dear!

There was another family whom I still visit. Father and Mother are
Comedy Acrobats and Jugglers. Night by night they appear in spangled
tights, and Father resins his hands in view of the audience, and lightly
tosses the handkerchief to the wings; and then bends a stout knee, and
cries "Hup!" and catches Mumdear on the spring and throws her in a
double somersault. There are two girls of thirteen and fifteen, and a
dot of nine; and they regard Dad and Mumdear just as professional pals,
never as parents. This is Dad's idea; he dislikes being a father, but he
enj