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felt the need of ;in agreement which
granted a night's truce in individual
warfare. The spectacle of a man wlio
has had opportunities of ulture re
verting to a pre-Ahrahaiiiic t.vie
would 1e discouraging if it were not
shock inland it is shocking liccause
kiicIi asiectaele is rare.
Miss Cisneros is to take the lecture
platform. She will tell all alnuit
Cuha captivcandCuba libra. The joor.
pretty girl has a rough road to travel.
Notoriety like hers, founded on
nothing .-lie has done but on some
thing which has happened to her or
which others have done for her, leads
by a steep, short descent to oblivion.
These few days of adulation in New
York have made her think fame and
fortune half won. To win a jmying
popularity in America requires talent
of no mean order, (cuius often comes
here and returns without recognition.
To win the reputation of a "nation of
shop-keepers requires a shrewdness
that no Miljsequent enthusiasm over
Cuba or an island captive will set
free. Miss Cisneros thinks we are "m
noble and so generous." which shows
that she lias notN reflected ujkui the
difference between advertising and
magnanimity.
Continued on page 0.
THE PASSING SHOW.
THE ERRAND.
Arise, arise, my tasty pace;
SadSc your hone, then spring
Upon hit back aadjpffd away
To the palace of the king.
There seek tome stable boy or groom,
Add aak of him. T pray,
Tel me which daughter of the king
Becomes a bride today?
And if he says, "The dark-haired one,
Bring me the sews with speed,
But if he says, The light-haired one,
You seed not urge your steed,
But leisurely retrace your way
Lnaeace,nIIyou see
The rope-walk. Buy a good, stout cord
And fetch it home to me.
From the German of Heine.
The Germans here are rabid at the
pat it ion of the Brooklyn women to
prevent the erection of a statue of
Heine in Prosjwct lark. But the
Gentians are prone to take every
thing too seriously even Heine.
Heine himself would sca'reely have
taken this affair seriously. He might,
indeed, .li&ve written., a satirical
couplet or two and made the Brook
lyn dames immortal by way of a
generous revenge. It does not matter
at all whether Brooklyn has a statue
of ncine or not. People who read
Heine need no reminder of him. and
people who do not read him would
never le any tiie wiser for one. The
Brooklyn ladies say that "Prospect
Park reflects the miiIIc of God" and
that Heine was a depraved man and
a poet and his image would seriously
interfere with the lofty suggestions
of their jiark. That is all right, let
the Brooklyn people have what they
want. They want a new fountain
and they want upon it the statue of
Home litterateur whose influence
would not be harmful to youth. Very
well, this is a free country. Let them
have a John Gilbert Holland foun
tain, or an E. P. Roe fountain, or a
Ruth Ashmore fountain: who cares?
It is thoroughly foolish and useless to
dash one's foot against a stone or to
attempt to correct the taste of the
Philistine.
Just a little while before lie died
Heine wrote. "Alas! the irony of God
weighs heavily upon me. The great
author of the universe, the Aristo
phanes of the heaveiiSjTvisbes to show
the petty, earthly, so-called German
Aristophanes how immeasurably be
excels me in humor and in colossal
wit. But I venture to most sul
missively offer the suggest ion that the
sport which the master has inflicted
niton his poor pupil is rather too long
drawn out.'
Yet it seems that the Lord has not
had his little joke out with Heine.
And on whatever Stygian- shore that
reMlessand glowing spirit "wanders,
be sure he appreciates the jest. One
can almost hear the echo of that old
Mephistophcliau laughter from the
Hue d Amsterdam.
I myself do not think he was the
proper sort of erson to build a statue
to in a Brooklyn park. What, the
.man who had hiuiMjlf carried to the
Louvre and lifting with his finger one
paralytic eyelid before the Venus di
Mi!o, wept and complained that her
hist arm were prosing .the feeble life
from him: this man in Brooklyn?
Perish the thought! Arise Elizabeth
Grannisand glut your ire!.
'Alas! What are all these destinies
thus driven jelI-ineH? Whither go
they?. Why are t hey mi?
"He who knows that. ees all the
shadow.
"He is alone. His name is God."
VICTOK HUGO.
Brooklyn is not the only place where
they are solicitous of the welfare of
"youth.' Youth is commanding
general attention in Pennsylvania
just now. "Les Mierables"' has just
been thrown out of the high school
library of Philadelphiaas an unfitting
work for youthful minds. As some
one has remarked, '-after a while they
will leave us nothing but Rabelais
and theiJible."' The affair lias liecn
discussed pro and con by all the news
papers in the state and the result is
that more copies of the book have
been sold in Pennsylvania in the lnt
three weeks than of any other work of
fiction. Marie Corelli's latest not ex
cluded.lt has been a Hugo renaissance.
Every shop-girl and lloor-walker car
ries a "Les Miserable" on the street
cars, if Victor Hugo were alive and
had an American pros agent I
should know it was a deep laid plot.
As it is I have my suspicion that the
Philadelphia school Iniard is made up
of publishers.
1 can rememlier a time when I
would have taken this very seriously
and wailed to the extent of several
columns and refused to lie comforted.
But what is the use of invective? The
thing did good all around: it made a
good story for the newspapers, is a
magnificent slam on Philadelphia,
showed nn-a few long-eared officials in '
their proier shaggy coats, and in
duced thousands of people to read a
great classic.
If one took things hard in a land
where Heine fountains are forbidden,
and "Les Miserables"' thrown out of
the libraries, and Lillian Russell con
sidered a great artist and Cuban
maidens rescued by enterprising
journalists, there would be nothing
left to one but suicide or insanity.
a
I am rather interested in ix:or
Evangelina Cisncros. though perhaps
that is because one of the -six clubs I
belong to is at present discussing the
""Working Girl Problem in Spain." I
should like to know the fate to the
Cisneros after her advertising uses
are over. Here is a Cuban peasant girl
who has never known anything but
hard work, and , wliov had none too
good a reputation among her own
people, living at one ot the best
hotels in New York with the lest
millinersat her command, feted and
dined and wined by that greedy mul
titude that will go any length, pay
any price, for a new sensation. When
Rome began to grow a weary of her
self the only way in which her em
perors could keep their heads on their
shoulders was by supplying the de
mand for novelty. Gladiators from
northern forests, alligators from the
Xile. tigers from the jungle of India,
dwarfs from the heart of Africa, a
slave girl f nun Greece or a Christian
martyr, it was all the same. The
great dailies are the kings of "New
Yorkand their program is about the
same. It is the old cry for a new
thing under the sun, and every re
mote possibility of a novel exjierience,
good, bad or indifferent, is siezed and
swept along in that mighty current.
Anna Held. Bob Filzsimmons, Li
Hung Chang, Yvette Guilbert. Mrs.
Ballington Booth. Cleo de Merode,
Eva Cisneros. all apjieal to the same
vulgar Kission. all are ranked alike as
features of the show which must
divert that mighty mob from itself
and relieve the ennui of a great city.
But after this is all over, after this
common, shallow. little ieasiut who
is masquerading, through no fault of
her own. as a heroine and a great
lady, what then? The Journal can
not make a reporter of her, because of
her ignorance of her language: Mr.
Carl Decker, her rescuer, cannot com
plete his romance and marry her for
he has a wife already: and she flatly
refuses to enter a convent. Her life
is sjKiiled for her. She will drop
helplessly into the gulf of Greater
Xew York. A Spanish prison would
have Ikhmi l)ctter.
Well, we have her she is with us.
Lillian. tie-divine, whom a certain
oap advertisement styles '"America's
pride." Miss Russell and Delia Fox
and Jefferson de Angelis are all down
at the Alvin playing I won't say
singing "The Wedding Day' to
jiarked houses. I cannot say that Miss
Russell is altogether as lovely as of
yore. There is a little drawn ex
pression about her mouth now and
then that tells that theyears have not
passed her by altogether. And yet
what a mouth it is! Nature did her
best work on that woman -and
played one of her sorriest jokes. It is
as though the relentless old hag was
just trying what could be done with a
IKjrfect body minus a soul. For Miss
Russell not only lacks the jKiwer to
portray emotion of any kind: she has
no sense of humor, she is utterly
without enthusiasm, indifferent alike
to her part and her audience, even to
her own charms. She is a plastic
figure: as inanimate, as pretty,
as much of a travesty ujiori the
highest lieajity as one of Cauovas
Vem:se. All these stories about her
improvement in acting and singing
are fairy tales. Still those meaning
less, stained-glsssattltudes. still that
smile as cold as winter moonlight,
never broadening into "sunlight and
salvation." Her voice is just as
fickle asever or as Lillian herself.
It registers just about six tones and
you can never count on those.
And O the costumes she wears! Can
anyone tell me why this matron in
sists upon disporting herself in
bodices and abbreviated skirts as if
she were in truth the "airy, fairy
Lillian' who graced the boards of the
Casino many a year ago? Why. those
costumes would Ihj trying upon the
physique of a lead pencil! They pain
fully accentuate her too - evident
embonioint, and quite destroy that
queenly grace which is the chiefestof
her charms. Yet for two long acts
her. matronly crson skipped and
coquetfer, -about 'the "stage in this
ingenu attire, a silly, a pitiful figure.
To say that the wrt demands such
costumes does not excuse them. It is
one thing to consider the demands of
a part and another to offer yourself a
living sacrifice to them. Since comic
operas are not supjiosed to be rigidly
realistic, I fail to see the reason for
such immolation. Only in the last
act did this haughty beauty deign to
dawn upon us costumed in that regal
style which alone lecomcsher,uud then
well, she was as near the ajxitlieosis
of blonde loveliness as you will find
uiKjii tliis imperfect planet. Gk1
bea veils! if that woman had a soul,
just a little two-for-a-cent soul, she
might- move the stars out of their ap
ixjintcd courses. But she has not. IXo
thoughts beyond her dresses and her
dinner will ever vex her. and in those
tranquil eyes no tempest will ever
dawn. Perhaps it is just as well. When
women have keen mind behind a
lovely face they tangle up the history
of a nation.
Of course Jeil de Angelis is the
strong arm of the comiiaify. the man"
who "makes the wheels go round.' If
it were not for him that blonde ojiera
would never get anywhere at all. I
will never lie quite content to go
under the grass until 1 have seen him
play Sir Toby Belch in "Twelfth
Night."
As for Delia Fox, she has never
been in Mich good trim since she left
De Wolfe Hopjier. When J saw her
last in "Fleur-de-Lys" I thought that
the brilliant part of her future was all
liehind her. But she never did better
work than she is doing now. Monday
night it almost seemed that the ''ten
der grace of a day that is dead'' had
come back to her. She was so con
spicuously unlike anyone else. She
was not for a moment broad or loud,
and she never glanced across the foot
lights. She had all those timid,
shrinking, captivating little manner
isms that arc all her own. and that
little upward look that is like nothing
so much as one of Rapheai's star
gazing cherubs. You remember that
Ieculiarly innocent little smile, an
infantine sort of smile? I never saw
it come and go so bewitching'. And
they tell me that at four o'clock in
the morning, when the son of the ex
minister to France and the hotel
portei carried her up stairs after a
supper that ended in intoxication and
unconsciousness, though she was
ghastly white, that smile was still on
her lips, tender, infantine. like that
of a sleeping child.
"Alas what are all these destinies
thus driven pell-mell? Whither go
they? Why are they so?"
Tuesday evening Miss Fox's part
was sung by her understudy. The
manager announced that she was "in
dismsed" and Miss Russell and
e Angelis ajKilogized to the audi
ence. There is one woman of intelligence
and earnestness and talent in that
company, Lucille Saunders. She has a
contralto voice of considerable range
and power, and after the uncertain
solos served up with a f rappe chain,
pagne smile by a certain blonde
divinity, a good, reliable vocal organ
gave you a sense of security and relief.
After enduring the shallowness of
those two dazzling daughters of joy
for an hour, it was like a breath of
fresh air when this real woman with
a real voice stepped cm the stage and
sang. Sang a love song, but O. so
different from their love songs! I do
not know Miss Saunders" professional
history, but I know that life mean
more to her than jewels and cocktails.
I don't think she has always sung in
comic opera. Strange how a serious
purjiose, an aspiration, even a fleeting
one. leaves its consecration on a face;
As Stevenson said. Endymion may
marry Audry and settle down and
tend pigs all his life, but he will
always be a better man for having
once loved the moon.
WILLA CATHER.
Pittsburg, Pa.
TO CURE A COLD IN ONE DAY
Take Laxatira Bromo Quinine Tablets. All
iitaUts refund the money If it fails to cure. 25c
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