rison could still be made to go as the chief figure in
a modern drama.

GESCHWITZ. If the man would only come, now!

RODRIGO. I've still got to redeem my properties out of the pawn-shop
here, too. Six hundred kilos of the best iron. The baggage-rate on
'em is always three times as much as my own ticket, so that the whole
junket isn't worth a trowser's button. When I went into the pawn-shop
with 'em, dripping with sweat, they asked me if the things were
genuine!--I'd have really done better to have had the costumes made
abroad. In Paris, for instance, they see at the first glance where
one's best points are, and bravely lay them bare. But you can't learn
that with bow-legs; it's got to be studied on classically shaped
people. In this country they're as scared of naked skin as they are
abroad of dynamite bombs. A couple of years ago I was fined fifty
marks at the Alhambra Theater, because people could see I had a few
hairs on my chest, not enough to make a respectable tooth-brush! But
the Fine Arts Minister opined that the little school-girls might lose
their joy in knitting stockings because of it; and since then I have
myself shaved once a month.

ALVA. If I didn't need every bit of my creative power now for the
"World-conqueror," I might like to test the problem and see what
could be done with it. That's the curse of our young literature:
we're so much too literary. We know only such questions and problems
as come up among writers and cultured people. We cannot see beyond
the limits of our own professional interests. In order to get back on
the trail of a great and powerful art we must move as much as
possible among men who've never read a book in their lives, whom the
simplest animal instincts direct in all they do. I've tried already,
with all my might, to work according to those principles--in my
"Earth-spirit." The woman who was my model for the chief figure in
that, breathes to-day--and has for a year--behind barred windows; and
on that account for some incomprehensible reason the play was only
brought to performance by the Society for Free Literature. As long as
my father was alive, all the stages of Germany stood open to my
creations. That has been vastly changed.

RODRIGO. I've had a pair of tights made of the tenderest blue-green.
If *they* don't make a success abroad, I'll sell mouse-traps! The
trunks are so delicate I can't sit on the edge of a table in 'em. The
only thing that will disturb the good imp