yet there was a wave of comical indignation that began with terrific threats and ended in a cloud of harmless smoke.

A measure intended to end the dispensary outright was introduced in the last legislature and was killed. All legislation directed against the dispensary was killed. The sole movement toward a good end was the appointment of a new board. of control and the consequent upsetting of the former chairman, H. H. Evans, of Newberry. It is quite useless to discuss further the incidents of outrageous graft that attend the dispensary. The state seems to have become so accustomed to its shame that it disregards the dispensary altogether except when that institution asserts itself in some manner.

The conditions to-day are not unpleasant, though they are a travesty on the dignity of laws and lawmaking. There is even greater freedom in the county option than there was during the years preceding the establishment of the dispensary, on account of the effectiveness of a measure called the "Brice law," which allows the counties to hold special elections to determine the disposition of the liquor question. The dispensary fought this opening wedge into the Supreme Court, where it was declared constitutional. Fourteen of the forty-two counties have already driven out the dispensary, so that it may be well believed that the old power is diminished.

In all the years of the dispensary the principal opposition to the will of Tillman has come from the largest city in the state, Charleston. There has scarcely been a day in the thirteen years when the dispensers succeeded in enforcing the laws in Charleston. At the present time there are ten dispensaries in the city, and nearly two hundred "blind tigers" or places where liquor may be bought contrary to the law. It is obvious that the dispensaries selling liquor, in the purchase of which there has been a conspiracy on the part of the agents of the state, which further is of a poor quality and to be bought only in package after filling out a blank form, can hardly compete with "the free and easy" places where liquor is sold by the drink. Though it is contrary to the law of the state, these "blind tigers are not only tolerated in Charleston, but they are actually made to pay a

quarterly license of $25 to the city, the license insuring them immunity from arrest, and the protection of the police.

A sketch of the dispensary, even a brief one, would not be complete without mention of Vincent Chicco, the king of the "blind tigers," and the unlearned, but shrewd and plucky Italian of Charleston, who has been the instigator of every fight waged against the dispensary and the powerful state machine. Chicco came to Charleston a boy of seventeen, on a sailing ship from Limerick. Successively a longshoreman, a stevedore, a policeman and a hotelkeeper, he started in the liquor business with a capital of thirty-six cents. When he went into it the dispensary law had just been passed, and was about to go into effect. The liquor dealers of the city hastily sold out their stock, and Chicco borrowed money enough to buy most of it. There was practically only one place in the whole city where liquor could be purchased in any form, for some time, and of course the shrewd Italian made money.

Then the constables sent out by the dispensary descended upon his place, carried away all his goods, everything they could find, down to the very doors of the house. Since that day there has been a perpetual warfare between Chicco and the constables, in which he has succeeded in outwitting them many times; but during which time they have taken from him liquor and property to the amount of $30,000.

Chicco breaks the law every day. He knows it. The people of Charleston know it. Chicco breaks the law with the consent of the police authorities of the city. If the city police should be present when the state constables come down upon Chicco, they would not only not render them assistance, but would probably be glad to see them defied. Such is the condition all through South Carolina.

With proper legislation on the liquor question and proper enforcement of rational laws on the subject, made to meet varying conditions, South Carolina would be one of the most orderly states in the union. With the present scandalous system, entailing political appointments distasteful to all self-respecting people of the state and creating a contempt for all laws, South Carolina will continue to be one of the lawless states.

HEN that admirable actor, Paul Orleneff, and his Russian play

were in Chicago, a dramatic critic remarked to the writer that Gogol's "Inspector" had probably inspired more modern comedies than any single play in the entire range of the drama. This statement was inspired by a situation wherein an impecunious adventurer passes himself off as an imperial inspector; a case of mistaken identity, in other words, used as the basis for ridiculous complications.

Had the critic in question substituted Molière's name for that of Gogol, and "Les Precieuses Ridicules" for "The Inspector," his statement regarding the influence of a single play upon the modern drama would have been more nearly correct; for Gogol's situation is but a phase of the one used by Molière in a play which is a landmark in the history of the drama.

Three elements make a play: situation, atmosphere, and characterization. Previous to Molière's day, situation had been so thoroughly developed by the Italians, Spaniards, Romans, and Greeks that it is doubtful if an entirely new dramatic situation has been evolved since their time. Molière, borrowing freely his situations from the ancients, revolutionized the drama by developing atmosphere and characterization in a way so true that his plays are studies of the manners of his time, his characters, living portraits of humanity. Even peerless Shakespeare

did not paint with the fidelity to truth displayed by Molière; nor have the Englishman's works been used in so marked a way by succeeding generations of dramatists as a quarry for building material.

Consciously or unconsciously, every modern playwright owes his technic to Molière, the first craftsman to develop the quality of naturalness now so essential to the success of a play, the first to paint men and women in the colors of truth.

By putting stage humor into literary form, Corneille pointed the road, perhaps, but he did not create French comedy. To Molière belongs that honor. Although farcical in construction, "Les Précieuses Ridicules" is the first true dramatic picture of the light and trivial occurrences of life, the first modern comedy.

Until the eventful afternoon when this play of untranslatable title was produced at the Hôtel du Petit Bourbon, the term précieuse had meant a woman of cultivation truly precious. It became, thenceforth, an obloquy. To appreciate how vulnerable to ridicule were the ladies whom Molière satirized, their story must be told.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the manners of French society had been those of the camp. At their close, Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, a social leader of unequaled talent, recreated French refinement; yet so farreaching has been the effect of Molière's comedy that she is often classed with her copyists as a précieuse ridicule. Besides

being ambitious and tactful, this remarkable woman was actively virtuous, a merit which inspired her to attempt a purification of society by reviving a taste for culture among the idle born.

Rebuilding her hôtel in the rue Saint Thomas du Louvre with this end in view, she discarded the customary central stairway, and substituted for the single vast and dreary salon of the period a series of antechambers and cabinets. In her drawing-room, the conventional shades of red and tan color were rejected and the blue velvet furniture installed which gave it the name of The Blue Room-La Chambre Bleue. When its doors were thrown open to the wit and beauty of Paris, French verse rose from the mire of tavern song to the dignity of poetry. Richelieu's condescension had made the writer's lot intolerable; but Madame de Rambouillet received the humblest author on a plane of equality with the grandest seigneur.

During its career of nearly fifty years. (1620-1665), the Hôtel de Rambouillet passed through three well defined phases. In the period of formation, its famous coterie was animated by youthful enthusiasm: Madame de Rambouillet was in the charming thirties; Julie, her eldest daughter, and Madeleine de Scudéry were just budding into womanhood; Vaugelas, Racan, Jean Louis de Balzac, Chapelain, and Voiture, ranged in age from thirtyfive to twenty-two. Imperious Malherbe, alone, was old and crusty; yet even he unbent so far as to contrive the poetic anagram of Arthénice from the Christian name of his hostess.

The assumption of fantastic noms de Parnasse was a feature of preciosity, so credit for inventing that cult might be given Malherbe; but, in those earlier days, affectation played small part at the Hôtel de Rambouillet. To quote Chapelain, "In no other place in the world, was there more good sense and less pedantry.' Conversation was cultivated as a fine art, and literature discussed with such intelligence that authors stood in honest dread of the Blue Room coterie's verdict. Moreover, new words were introduced into the language, superfluous letters suppressed, obscure points argued, and terms defined for use in the dictionary of the newly born French Academy; in short, through one charming woman's tact, the poet and

the scholar replaced the swashbuckler as a social influence.

Restraining Malherbe died in 1628, whereupon Erudition, that just god, was deposed by Verbiage. Sarrasin, Conrart, Patru, Godeau, and Segrais became the acolytes of High Priest Voiture, undisputed arbiter of elegance; Mlle. de Coligny and Mlle. de Scudéry, the Princesse de Guéméné, the Marquise de Sablé and the Comtesse de Maure were among his devotees; even Saint Evremond and La Rochefoucauld bent the knee. Garlands of verses were entwined in daughter Julie's honor; young Bossuet preached tentative sermons in the Blue Room; Corneille read tragedies; but, alas, circumlocution became the dominant ritual of its culture worship. Still, Voiture's sonnets and roundelays were charming poetry, his al fresco fêtes distinguished for good taste; not until his death did preciosity become ridiculous.

The third phase is the period of decline. In 1645, Julie de Rambouillet married a persistent nobleman whose austerity chilled the Blue Room atmosphere, and Voiture died three years later. Then the Fronde divided society into bitter factions, and family deaths closed the doors of the Hôtel de Rambouillet for a time. The subsequent illness of its hostess, too, although accountable for the quaint custom of receiving guests at the ruelle, or bedside, restricted its coterie to her intimate friends. After the wars of the Fronde, the Blue Room was reopened, but Madame de Rambouillet was verging on seventy, a woman faded and blue as her velvet furniture. Then claimants for her social throne appeared, to emulate but not to equal her in brilliancy, and in the salons of these rivals, the preciosity that Molière satirized was born, a base imitation of the Blue Room culture.

Foremost among these competitors was Madeleine de Scudéry, whose novel, "Artamène; ou, le Grand Cyrus,' appeared about the time the mysterious word précieuse was first whispered from lip to lip. This interminable story portrayed the Blue Room familiars in the guise of classic heroes, and its success was so marked that its old maid author resolved to secede from the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and embark in leadership herself. When the languishments and love maps

of "Artamène's" ten-volume successor, "Clélie," created a maudlin craze throughout feminine Paris, Mlle. de Scudéry's salon in the rue de Beauce became the consecrated temple of preciosity. Socially ambitious women were early proselytes of the new cult. Knowing the futility of storming the exclusive Hôtel de Rambouillet, they concentrated their attacks upon the weaker stronghold and, in their zeal for refinement, endeavored to annex the entire realm of knowledge. If Mlle. de Scudéry's salon was lacking in distinction, it certainly made up for it in frenzy. In the rue Saint Thomas du Louvre, preciosity had been a creditable avoidance of distasteful terms, a literary movement no more pronounced than the euphuism of Sidney and Lyly; less so than that of Gongora in Spain or Marini in Italy; but in the rue de Beauce, it became an absurd neology and the cult of extravagant words.

Imagine a fashion demanding circumlocutory quirks in ordinary conversation, such as "defiers of the weather" for hats, "indispensables of conversation" for chairs, furniture of the mouth," for teeth, "pearls of Iris" for tears, and "gates of the understanding" for ears; yet such was the preciosity of Mlle. de Scudèry's disciples. Moreover, it was not confined to love-lorn spinsters, or new women; for each précieuse had her alcôviste, or attendant cavalier, and precious verbiage was designed, above all, adequately to express the tender passion.

There were several degrees of précieuses: les illustres, les grandes, et les petites, and, in Parisian society, a précieuse illustre took rank as a duchess at court. In the capital, the disciples of the new ritual performed just such antics of culture as did the æsthetes in England a quarter of a century ago, and, in the provinces, where Parisian manners were aped by all foolish women, the pranks of the précieuses passed all reason.

This was the state in which preciosity found itself when Molière reached Paris in the autumn of 1658. His play, "Les Précieuses Ridicules," was produced at the Hôtel du Petit Bourbon with marked success on November 18, 1659. The story is simple, but a sufficient framework for delicious satire. A word upon its construction.

Magdelon and Cathos, newly come to Paris from the provinces, are respectively daughter and niece to Gorgibus, and have been provided by this worthy bourgeois with a pair of honest suitors called La Grange and Du Croisy. Although unacquainted with the great world except through Mlle. de Scudéry's vapid pages, these young ladies assume the airs and graces of full-fledged précieuses, and scorn their admirers for having the effrontery to propose matrimony point-blank, instead of proceeding discreetly, in accordance with precious standards, by billets doux, petits soins, billets gallants, and jolis vers.

Enraged at at being jilted by such upstarts, La Grange and Du Croisy plan a cruel revenge. The former has a valet named Mascarille who, as he says, "can pass in the eyes of most people for a fine wit, since nothing is cheaper nowadays than cleverness," so this fellow, dressed up in extravagant finery and bearing the grandiloquent name of the Marquis de Mascarille, is borne by chairmen into the very house of these imperious country ladies, there to pass himself off as a wit and beau of society. Deceived by his ribbons and his ready tongue, both Magdelon and Cathos fall easy prey to his blandishments, and, flattered by the attentions of one so influential at court, as Mascarille pretends to be, they consider their social fortunes made. To abet his fellow-servant's knavery and complete the headturning of the ridiculous prêcieuses, Du Croisy's valet presents himself as the Vicomte de Jodelet, un brave à trois poils, or fashionable fire-eater; but at the very moment when these rascals are celebrating their triumph by music and an impromptu dance, their masters appear to strip the foppish doublets from their backs. Before the bumiliated ladies who preferred their lackeys to themselves, La Grange and Du Croisy give the pair a sound beating; then Mascarille, robbed of his finery and sore from his blows, thus bemoans his fate:

"Is this the way to treat a marquis?" he asks his fellow-victim.

"But it is the way of the world. The slightest disgrace makes those who petted us despise us. Come, comrade, let's seek our fortunes elsewhere. They care for nothing here but vain appearances: virtue unadorned has no consideration."

Upon this canvas, Molière painted a

caricature of polite society. The antics of preciosity had passed all bounds of intelligence, so his subject appealed to every sane mind. Even though his précieuses were nobodies from the provinces, and his alcôviste a masquerading servant, the shaft went home because its aim was true. Magdelon and Cathos languished and sighed like the real précieuses, and their talk was just as maudlin. Take, for instance, the former's protest to her father against the boorish love-making of La Grange and Du Croisy:

My cousin will tell you, father, as well as I, that matrimony ought never to happen till after other adventures. A lover, to be agreeable, must know how to express fine sentiments; to breathe soft, tender and passionate vows; his courtship, too, must be according to the rules. In the first place, he should behold the fair creature with whom he falls in love at a place of worship, when out walking, or at some public ceremony; or else, he should be introduced to her by a relative or a friend, as if by chance; and when he leaves her presence, he should appear pensive and downcast. For a time, he hides his passion from the object of his adoration; but, when paying her visits, he should never fail to present some question of gallantry to be discussed by all the wits present. When the moment of his declaration arrives, which usually should be contrived in some shady walk, with the company at a distance, it must be quickly followed by anger, shown by our blushing, and sufficient to banish the lover from our presence for a time. He soon finds means, however, to appease our resentment and gradually accustom us to his tender avowals, as well as to draw that confession from our lips which causes us so much pain. After that, come adventures: rivals who cross the path of our mutual love, parental persecutions, unfounded jealousies, complaints, despair, abductions, and all that follows. Thus are such arranged in fashionable society, and true gallantry can not dispense with these forms. But to come out point-blank with a proposal of marriage, to make love with a marriage-contract, and begin a novel at the wrong end! Once more, father, nothing could be more tradesmanlike, and the mere thought of it makes me sick at heart.

matters

Surely there are many foolish girl novelreaders in the twentieth century whose conception of the art of love-making is not unlike Magdelon's. Indeed, Molière's characterization and dialogue display such a modern quality that "Les Précieuses Ridicules" might readily be edited so as to become a skit upon the "smart set" of Paris, London, or New York. Take, for instance, this bit in which the masquerading servant Mascarille impresses the

country précieuses with his metropolitan airs:

Mascarille. Well, ladies, what do you think of Paris?

Magdelon. Alas, what can we think? Not to confess that Paris is the home-office of wonders, the center of good manners, taste, and wit, is to acknowledge one's self the opposite of bright.

Mascarille. As for me, I maintain that outside Paris there is no salvation for right-minded people.

Cathos. A truth, beyond doubt.

Mascarille. Of course, Paris is muddy, but then we have the sedan.

Magdelon. True; the sedan is a marvellous protection against the insults of both mud and weather.

If the word automobile were substituted for sedan, in the above, it would be difficult to believe Mascarille was not a present-day valet masquerading as un homme du dernier chic. Again, when he is calling attention to his finery, his conceit is not unlike the modern French dandy, who, instead of ribbons from Perdigéon's, wears ties from the rue de la Paix.

Mascarille. What do you think of my ribbon? Does it match my coat?

Cathos. Perfectly!

Mascarille. A well selected ribbon, eh? Magdelon. Tremendously well selected, real Perdigéon.

Mascarille. What have you to say of my canons?

Magdelon. They have quite an air!
Mascarille.

I may boast that they are a quarter wider than any yet made.

Cathos. I am forced to confess that I have never seen exquisite taste in dress carried so far. Mascarille. Try your sense of smell on these gloves.

Magdelon. They smell terribly well.

Cathos. I have never inhaled a more delicate scent.

Mascarille. (Presenting his curled wig to be smelt.) And this?

Magdelon. It is perfect in quality! It fairly intoxicates one's brain with joy.

Mascarille. You haven't said anything about my feathers. What do you think of them? Cathos. They are terribly beautiful! Mascarille. Do you know they cost me a gold Louis each; but, above all, it is my mania to wish everything of the very best.

Magdelon. I assure you we have tastes in common, you and I; for I am horribly particular about what I wear, even to my stockings. I can't endure anything that is not made by a skilled workwoman.

By substituting "tie" for ribbon in this dialogue, "spats" for canons, and "top hat" for feathers, Mascarille's language might readily be that of a modern popinjay. Indeed, middle-class young ladies