the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of The New Inn, begat these verses "to himself " :— Come, leave the loathed stage, And this more loathsome age, Inditing and arranging every day Something they call a play. At the commencement of our own century, and in what we are wont to consider the Roscian Period of the British stage, its condition seemed so deplorable to Leigh Hunt, then the dramatic critic of The News, as to require “An Essay on the Appearance, Causes, and Consequences of the Decline of British Comedy.' "Of Tragedy," he wrote, we have nothing; and it is the observation of all Europe that the British Drama is rapidly declining." Yet the golden reign of the Kembles was then in its prime; and such names as Bannister, Fawcett, Matthews, Elliston, and Cooke occur in Hunt's graceful and authoritative sketches of the actors of the day.' As to the newer plays, Gifford said, "All the fools in the kingdom seem to have exclaimed with one voice, Let us write for the theatre!' Latter-day croakers would have us believe that the 1 Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, Including General Observations on the Practice and Genius of the Stage. London, 1807. Some publisher would do well to give us a reprint of this noted collection. Tragic Muse, indignant at the desecration of her English altars, took flight across the ocean, alighting in solemn majesty at the Old Park Theatre of New York, but that she disappeared utterly in the final conflagration of that histrionic shrine. Well, there are smouldering remnants of the Old Park still left to us; veteran retainers of the conventional stride, the disdainful gesture, the Kemble elocution, and that accent which was justly characterized as Ojus, insijjus, hijjus, and perfijjus! But the Muse is immortal, though so changing the fashion of her garb, it would appear, as often to fail of recognition from ancient friends. We think that modern acting is quite as true to nature as that of the school which has passed away, while its accessories are infinitely richer and more appropriate; and as to the popular judgment, how should that be on the decline? In America,-where common wealth makes common entrance, and the lines are not so clearly drawn between the unskilful many and the judicious few, managers will always make concessions to the whim and folly of the hour. But we see no cause for discouragement, so long as dramas are set forth with the conscientious accuracy that has marked the latest productions of Hamlet and Richelieu, and while hushed and delighted audiences, drawn from every condition of society, leave all meaner performances to hang upon the looks and accents of Nature's sweet interpreter, Edwin Booth. XVII KING "THE FROLIC AND THE GENTLE"1 ROM the first he had the grace to put me on close FRO terms with him, although we seldom met when he had not just come from a distant region or was departing for some other point as far. In this wise, I could not free myself from the illusion that he was a kind of Martian—a planetary visitor, of a texture differing from that of ordinary Earth-dwellers. It seemed quite natural that he should map out the globe, and bore through it to see of what it was made. Now that he is gone, I am still looking for his casual return. There was one occasion which I did not share with others of his present celebrants; a period when I had him to myself, and when he began an episode eventful in even his own full life. This was nothing less than that of his initial visit to the Old World. By chance, with a son in his first year out from Yale, I left New York, in the spring of 1882, on the same steamer which numbered on its passenger-roll Clarence King, and another mining-expert, at that time his partner. Of course I had read with admiration, a decade earlier, the Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, and often had wondered why its luminous author had not shone continuously in our literature. I should have 1 From Clarence King Memoirs. The King Memorial Committee of the Century Association, 1904. wondered the more that I had never met him, had I not seen his name figuring in those society lists that were quite alien to my quiet round of life. But at dinner we were at the same table. He was good enough to make the advance, and to claim a whimsical consanguinity on the score of our Clarentian prenomina. Now, I knew that he was a famous government geodeticist, but had no conception of his temperament. Perhaps he took me with equal seriousness. At all events, he was more on his dignity, or gravity, than I ever afterward saw him. In the starry evening we walked the deck together, and talked of public affairs, books, etc., soon wandering to scientific research and discovery, concerning which I eagerly listened to his theories of matter, vortex rings, the Earth's structure, the chances of a future life. I doubt if there was a laugh between us, and am sure that I never again found him so long in one humor. Nor was there anything in this thorough-bred, traveldressed, cosmopolitan to suggest that he had not spent repeated seasons upon the hemisphere to which we were bound. Out on the blue, the next morning, what a transformation! As I have said, it was in fact King's first opportunity to visit Europe, strictly off duty, and with means that seemed to him beyond the dreams of avarice. He broke out into a thousand pranks and paradoxes. Freedom was what we both needed, and my own reserve was at an end the moment I saw him changed from the dignitary to a veritable Prince Florizel with the tray of tarts, offering lollipops right and left. He and his comrade, I was speedily made to know, had "struck it rich" in a mine and were independent for life. His motto for one summer at least was "Vive la bagatelle." His frolic was incessant and contagious. Here was my overnight philosopher with double-eagles in his pocket, one of which he periodically flipped in the air to decide wagers made upon every possible pretext between himself and his decidedly less buoyant colleague. He jested, fabled, sparkled, scorned concealment of his delight. Indeed, I verily believe that I then had the rare fortune, at the beginning of our friendship, first, to learn the resources and conviction of his noble mind, and in a trice to enjoy the ebullition of his mirth and fancy on some of the happiest days of his existence. He had with him a Gargantuan letter of credit. From a slip in his wallet he took and showed me a single draft for a thousand pounds, a very sacred special fund, which was to be piously expended for some one work of art, his roc's egg, his supreme trophy— in fine, the most beauteous and essential thing he might come upon in this tour. All this as gravely as if he were a Knight of the Grail, or meditating in the end to shift to America the Hotel Cluny or a court of the Alhambra. Among the many wagers which he forced his staid comrade to accept was one that compelled the loser to take the four of us, young and old, to Epsom on the Derby Day that would occur soon after our arrival in London. King lost this bet, plainly by his own intent. Everything was to come off in the traditional |