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THE COURIER.
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liavo been laid, cities have been plant
ed, schools have been established,
mines have been dug and expensive
machinery imported by the English
in opposition to the Dutch who, as a
race, arc as conservative as the Amer
ican Indian. They have got us far as
frame houses and porches but still
look with suspicion on bay windows
in houses. If they possess the nervous
energy and scrapping ability of our
Puritan forefathers they will And
someway to beat England out. If
they fall, so much better for the Trans
vaall. Racial movements are neither
right nor wrong. The race witli the
strongest vitality, ibe strongest race,
clastic enough to take advantage of cir
cumstances will win tbe victory. The
Anglo Saxon has beaten in so many
contests, that this one in (.he Trans
vaal seems already decided in his fa
vor. If the Dutch are really like the
Puritans in New England they will
win for there was a greater difference
between England and the colonies in
1770 than there is now botween Eng
land and the Dutch in Africa.
The Royal Box.
Last Friday night at the Oliver Mr.
Charles Coghlan and his excellent
company played The Royal Box; a ro
mantic play in five acts founded on a
drama by Alexandre Dumas and
adapted by Mr. Coghlan. The p'ay
has some weak points, Mr. Coghlan
and his company none. From the
star to the footman the acting was
flawless. It was as good as a book
which is usually much better than a
play. 1 he vraisemblance of costumes,
furniture and manners to the first
years of the century when George IV
was still prince of Wales was complete
enough to satisfy the audience,' which
knew no more of the period than that
men wore knee breeches, low shoes,
and took snuff; that women wore era
pire gowns, were invariably intri
guantes, and that the manners of both
men and women were flowery and
more deferential if less sincere than
they are today. The audience had
learned these things about the first
years of the century from books,
prints, and miniatures. The artistic
and scholarly designer of the costumes
and furniture for The Royal Box
knew the outward aspect of people
and things of the time he sought to
recall from a closer study of "remains"
just as Dumas was able to reproduce
the words, the manners, and the pecu
liar habit of thought, so that the epi
sode supposed to have happened a
hundred years ago, happened again
last Friday night. The real literary
flavor of the play, as Mr. Coghlan pre
sents it, is exquisite and lasting. It
is unfortunately true that actors sel
dom know or value that quality which
gives a play and its performance an
abiding flavor. Mr. Booth never for
got it. Mr. Irving, Mr. Jefferson, Miss
Marlowe, and now Mr. Coghlan recog
nize and impart this flavor, a flavor
which is to be found in Chaucer in
Sbakspere in Thackeray, and which
we are too limited to know by any
other name than literary but it
might as well be called X for we do
not know its secret, we cannot an
alyse it, and if never a book had been
written it would still exist in the way
certain men and women tell a story or
act it.
For employing so fine a company
and trusting to western audiences to
recognize their ability and quality as
well as his own eminent gifts, Mr.
Coghlan exhibits a confidence and
faith that is touching and should be
rewarded by large audiences.
If there hud been nothing more than
the first act, set us a reception rocm
in the Swedish Embassy in London,
with painted walls and spindle-legged,
enameled furniture, with the dialogue
between two court dames with axes
in their hands with which they gushed
each others' hearts and reputations
and the entrance of the Swedish am
bassador, the Prince of Walee and
Clarence the actor at the end of the
scene, still the fragment, like one of
Phidias' was enough to mako the
heart of a lover of beauty for beauty's
sake beat quicker for satisfaction.
The little acrobat, Taylor Granville,
in soiled rose colored small-clothes
was not the least perfect part of Mr.
Coghlan's rnre good company, and Mr.
Tlpps. a constable, Mr. Henry War
wick, had the perennial, classical fla
vor of constables since ShaHspere
made the cup winner.
The construction of the play is so
clever that there is never a creak of
machinery. Each act of the Ave is
short, the action is rapid and does not
halt. But at the end of the last act,
where third rate playwrights place
the caste all in a row coupled for life,
Clarence the first matinee hero of the
entury who was but now madly in
love with a woman of fashion is pared
off with a Miss Pryce the first matinee
girl whose lines from her first entry
sound the familiar matinee girl's key
in G gush. So much in love witli the
countess of Felsen that he was will
ing to sacrifice his reputation as an
actor. and to denounce the Prince
from the stage, it is not credible
that Clarence would turn immediately
to the matinee girl who has sought to
arouse hissympathy by tales of a trite
cruel guardian who is forcing her to
marry a wicked lord whom she cannot
love. But In the last act of The
Royal Box Clarence actually and
radiantly accepts the colorless stage
crazy young lady who so persistently
visits him.
Klplwgs School Days.
The school days and early life of
Mr. Kipling portrayed in "Stalky and
Co." explains the Rabelaisian coarse
ness of his mature work, A coarse
ness of the camp, of college and of
clubs, a repulsive coarseness of diction
and of subject said to prevail in
camps, and colleges, in mining camra,
and occasionally in men's clubs.
Whatever the function and purpose
of woman mav be and just now her
ralson' d'etre is being debated with
some warmth-one of the most im
portant is to associate with man and
to prevent him by precept, example
and exhortation, from degeneration.
Without tne constant presence of
good women, men can be soldiers, good
business men or successful novelists
but their conversation aud the pro
duct of their minds when Isolated, is
said to be Rabelaisian.
The effect of the boys' boarding
schools upon Englishmen is apparent
In English literature, but I know of
no writer who responds so markedly to
.this Influence as Kipling. In spite of
his gifts he has not been able to por
tray; except faintly and incorporeally,
a good woman. In The Light that
Failed, The Phantom Rickshaw, and
many other Indian tales the women
are of a class much below even those
which Fielding chose, not for heroines
but for minor characters. Taken
away from their mothers and from all
female influence at eight years of age
it is not surprising that- the speech
of Englishmen is repulsively frank
and that only a few English writers
are capable of a real heroine such us
the world has worshiped since Eve.
The three odious little cynics of
Stalky and Co. have prototypes enough
in this country but compared to the
boys who are scolded, bossed, und
tuckea into bed by their female rela
tlves their number is small, thunks to
the Institution of the public school
A boy that has a little talk with his
mother at tho end of the day, who
loyally recognizes her as his com
manding officer has all the chances in
his favor. lie is the sort of man,
when lie gets to be one, that girls
want to marry und that corporations
want to hire. Tee gamin who is sent
away to school because Ills mother
cannot control him is the exception
in America. Mr. Kipling frequently
expresses his contempt in Stalky and
Co. for the day school boy who returns
to ilia mother when school is over.
But if those same duy pupils were
possessed of the literary gifts of little
Rutlyurd they would now be uble to
portray a female character who would
not deserve our contempt. What we
scorn in our youth, later logic and ex
perience will not transfigure. The
mind of youth has not been tran
scribed or written upon. The first
marks make so heavy an Impression It
can never be written over. It is the
youthfulness, the clearness of the im
age or the impression a writer is able
to communicate that makes him fas
cinating or commonplace. Kipling
knew nothing about women in his
youth. He lived in an atmosphere of
scorn for their weakness and senti
ment and the inevitable result of his
bringing up is the life-long conceal
ment of their secret from him. Mr.
Kipling would Dot mind this at all, if
his trade were not writing und ills
wuge the price of seeing true. More
than all that, when posterity's turn
comes the glamour and newness of
Soldiers Three will have been worn
off and posterity will Judge him for
his faithful delineation of the men
and women of the latter half of the
nineteenth century and it is more
than likely Kipling will be sentenced
to oblivion for assault and battery on
women. For in some respects the
most modern and the most gifted
writer of this period, in female por
traiture, he is the least gifted of all
novelists. Hardy, Black, James, Du
Maurier, Howells, Wllkins, Hurris,
Cable, and even Zola might look down
upon him from unmeasured heights.
While Tolstoi's. Turgenleff's, and Dos
toyievsky's women are modern with
the quality of the eternal feminine so
inexplicably conveyed that even their
personality forever attracts. Even
the unfortunate women are portrayed
by these men so sympathetically that
instead of the loathing and contempt
which Kipling's creatures excite, tho
spirit the intellect, as in Anna Karen
ina forever haunts the reader.
Many an author whose books have
been received with undiscrimlnating
enthusiasm has made the mistake
that Kipling made in Stalky and Co.
Neither the American nor tho British
reading public can receive an autobi
ography like this one of Kipling's
without Immediately applying it as a
key to the books ho has written. The
next book Mr. Kipling writes the re
viewers will handle with less veneru
tion. There will . be no longer any
illusion concerning his views and he
himself lias furnished exact informa
tion which explains his limitation?.
I've discovered a way to get rid of
those cigars my wife gave me on Christ
mas, How?
1 give one evory Wednesday and Sun
day evening to tho oung man who culls
on my daughter. Tbe poor chap does
not dare refuse them. Bazar.
Native Ye wanter keep pretty straight
in this here town, stranger, for thn citi
zens lynch a man on the slightest provo
cation Tenderfoot Would you lynch a man
for killin' a dog?
Native Would we? Why I've kcowed
a feller to be lynched fer killiu' a china
man.
ITr-iHItlllMMIMMIMMMMMMuuL
:the passing show:
W I LLA GATHER
ttM)MMIMMMMMMMMMmig4
"I hate him, for he is a Christian."
Merchant of Venice.
Miss Viola Allen and Hall Caine'a
much advertised monstrosity, "Tho
Christian " are in town. Of "The Chris
tian: a Play;" all I that can say Is that
it is neither Christian nor play, and that
heathen lands would blush to have
given it birth. Mr. Hall Caine'B income
is twenty thousand pounds a year, and
Mr. Henry James, the first living writer
of pure English and the highest expo
nent of refined literary art, makes an in
comb i of three hundred pounds a year,
a smaller sum than most expert account
ants are content with. Now if the
figures of the two men's incomes were
reversed, it would indicate the millenial
dawn of public taste.
The only merit I have ever heard
he claimed for "T Christian" is that it is
exciting, and bo it is in a thoroughly
illegitimate manner, much as "The Sign
of the CrosB" i9 exciting, That is to say,
it is frankly and aggressively sensational.
If an author denies himself no liberty,
shunB no situation, however trite and
cheap, permits himself all the ugly, dis
agreeable words that yellow journalism
has invented, he ought to be able to
concoct some sort of excitement for the
gallery, at least and in all audiences
the gallery element predominates, no
matter where they happen to sit. It
Mr. Hall Oaine fails to inteiest his do
voted readers, it is certainly because of
no delicate scruples aa to the means be
u:ea.
The plot of the play follows closely
that of the novel, with which tbe public
is, alas, more familiar, than with that
of many a better book. The first act is
placed in the Isle ot Man, where Glory
Quayle fiirts a bit with some strange -
gentleman from Londqn, and makes ber
plans to go there and take up tho voca
tion of a trained nurse, during which
conversation her glum, ecclesiastical
lover sulks among the ruins of the old
castle. Miss Allen's desperate and coti
sjientious attempts at kittenishness, I
found both inadequate and painful. She
is an earnest, serious young woman,
with much etrenuousness and something
of tbe puritanic in her make up. She is
a wonderfully thorough and capable
actress, but she is by no means great
enough to escape the limitations of her
own decided personality. Mr. Hall
Caine himself did not seem to have any
very clear or consistent conception of
'Glory Quayle," save that she resem
bled Ellen .Terry physically and temper
amentally, and that she was a madejp
creature, full of life and health and
youthful blood. Mow when Miss Allen
essays to play a madcap girl ot smiles
and tears, she goes against nature, and
all the positiveness ot her own intense
individuality 1b against her. Thatehe y
can play bo exotic a character bo well aa f
she doea attests much as to her skill and
training, but after all an actress is more
fortunate when she pulls with the cur
rent of her own nature,
The ending of this first act la little
less than ludicrous. "John Storm,"
the sulky lover, makes some vague sug
gestions that if "Glory" would consent
to remain on the island and marry him,
such a proceeding might not seriously
interfere with his theological studies.
When she fails to fervidly embrace this
icy opportunity, he talks church and ie
nuniiation, and suddenly calls hia sweet
heart down to the front of the stago be
fore the assembled populace of tbe Iale
of Man, and announces to her that be
haB decided to become a monk and will
have none of her. Was ever a heroine .
called upon to face a more trying and f
awkward situation?
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