though they grew more numerous and in a way more arduous, they were also more interesting. The crudities were being obliterated, and the thing gradually assumed a shape, became a dramatic whole. The boys began to see more sense in what they were doing. Constantly growing, likewise, was their proficiency in the musical part. The tunes were not "stunty" syncopations, but they were pretty and "whistlable," and therefore they found favor with the little New York boys. For though the individual. might have been a Roosian, a French, a Turk, or Proosian, he became A-mer-i-can as soon as he was asked to carry a melody. So, they took to the music of Sir Arthur as though their favorite river were the Thames and not the East.

In time the solo parts were assigned. Competition waxed keen but sportsmanlike withal. On one occasion a boy was dethroned from a star rôle within a few days of the public performance. He felt sore, of course; it is n't over-pleasant to find some one else installed in the shoes you have just nicely broken in. But the boy took his medicine like a man, retired to the ranks of the privates, and when the great day came was the most enthusiastic and efficient member of the chorus.

When "Patience" was performed it made more than a success of esteem. The boys of the neighborhood, forgetting the doubtful entertainment derived from "Trial by Jury," and remembering rather "Pinafore" and "The Pirates of Penzance," were all in their seats when the curtain rose. They still admired with a sort of wonder verging on bewilderment. The performers, too, it is not unfair to say, felt a bit like the man in Calverley's foem:

"Was I haply the lady's suitor,

Or her uncle? I can't make out.
Ask your governess, dears, or tutor.
For myself, I'm in hopeless doubt
As to why we were there, who on earth
we were,

Or what this is all about."

might expect a boy of thirteen to have with a speech like this:

"I am in point of fact a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this" (Pooh Bah distinctly did not understand) "when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. When all the great officers of State resigned in a body, because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?"

Yet Pooh Bah emerged victorious. But that's another story. "Patience" "made good." The mothers and fathers flocked to the auditorium. their eyes shining with delight over the unsuspected histrionic powers of Patsy and Otto and Ikey. That settled once for all the question of whether the movement was or was not a "go." It was no longer an experiment but a fixture. "Iolanthe" and "The Mikado," the plays which followed in successive. winters, have drawn constantly growing and more appreciative audiences.

Perhaps the best indication of the way the Gilbert and Sullivan shows take hold of the Tompkins Square community, adult or infant, is the fact that the jokes and tunes are remembered and repeated and whistled long after ordinary jokes and tunes have been forgotten. This is no mean educational achievement. Το make two words of Gilbert grow where one of Faddenese thrived before may well be counted a proud accomplishment.

Strephon, in "Iolanthe" says:

"I stood in court, and there I sang him songs of Arcadee, with flageolet accompaniment-in vain. At first he seemed amused, so did the Bar: but quickly wearying of my song and pipe, bade me get out. A servile usher, then, in crumpled bands and rusty bombazine, led me, still singing, into Chancery Lane. I'll go no more! I'll marry her to-day and brave the upshot, be it what it may!"

Now nobody hopes that the youth of the East Side will adopt this style of narrative on working days or even on half-holidays. Nor are they expected to recognize that this kind of writing is a parody of the sentimental. It is sufficient if they receive it into their systems by some process of subconscious absorption; it is sufficient if they feel the way Alice felt after reading "Jabberwocky."

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas," she mused, bewildered, "only I don't exactly know what they are."

adversity. It is also interesting to note that these boys will be boys; in fact they sometimes refuse to be girls, hereby differing from the undergraduates who take pleasure in dressing up in their sisters' clothes in college dramatics. The twenty lovesick maidens in "Patience" were not only love-sick, but maidens against their will.

The boys, however, possess one distinctly feminine characteristicthe desire for finery. Perhaps the strongest incentive to take part in the comic operas is the realization that they will be able to appear in costume before their friends and relatives. This feeling sometimes produces amusing consequences. The Bo'sun and the

Bo'sun's mate in "Pinafore" were each supplied with a whistle. The whistle had about as much to do with the case as the flowers that bloom in

From a photograph by The Boys' Camera Club

"GROSVENOR" A FLESHLY POET

the spring. It was tucked away in the blouse throughout the entire performance. One night, however, the Bo'sun was horrified to discover that he had lost his whistle. He demanded a new whistle. He was politely informed that there was no other whistle in the building, and that at best it was a useless adornment. He protested, however, that his rank was not adequately indicated without one, and refused to be pacified until he had obtained the whistle of his mate.

On another occasion, in rehearsing for "The Mikado," Pooh Bah desired to add a sword to his uniform. He was told tactfully and amiably that, although he might be First Lord of the Treasury, Groom of the Backstairs, Archbishop of Titipu, and Lord Mayor, among other functionaries, there was nothing in his manifold personality

which required a martial accoutrement. And it was only after the exercise of overpowering argument that he finally admitted the fallacy of his contention.

This appetite for splendor and display, as a rule, is well satisfied. The shows are mounted with all the corroborative detail necessary to give artistic verisimilitude to what might be a bald and unconvincing narrative. Mr. Tabor paints all the scenery himself and designs the costumes. The traditional properties are all supplied, together with the traditional "business" created a quarter of a century ago by Rosina Brandram, George Grossmith, and others. The Royal Umbrella who shades the Mikado was this year a four-year-old barely able to toddle.

The number of annual performances has steadily increased until six presentations of "The Mikado" were given. The public dress-rehearsal is for members of The Boys' Club only. The price of a seat is only five cents. Other performances at Avenue A are given for the benefit of the parents and the neighborhood generally. Tickets are never higher than a quarter of a dollar.

Last year, however, the innovation was attempted of invading the enemy's country by giving two performances at Berkeley Lyceum at two dollars and a half an orchestra chair. Over five thousand dollars, realized therefrom, have been turned into the treasury of The Boys' Club. The laudable desire to uplift the unfortunate rich has met with so hearty a response that in all probability the missionary movement will be continued in 1907, 1908, and 1909 with "The Gondoliers," "The Yeoman of the Guard," and "The Sorcerer." In time it is hoped that these hardened and corrupt theatre-goers will be cured of their folly, and will no longer follow the strange gods of Yankee Doodle nasal slang and of vulgarity that is not fun.

"Out of the mouths of babes," to return to the text.

HE world will re

member two Count Tolstoys. One was a great artist; he died many years ago. The other is a befuddled prophet; he still lives. The artist stuck his pen into the quivering heart of mankind, and wrote. The passion-spent renunciant of the same name sticks his tongue into his cheek, and pronounces the other Tolstoy a fraud.

In a penitential mood the later Tolstoy wrote a book called "What is Art?" wherein he laid down the amazing doctrine that unless a work of art appealed to a peasant it was not art. Beethoven and Wagner and Shelley were decried as sensualists. They had loved beauty and appealed to sex; therefore their art was evil. Tolstoy put his own works on his "Index" and his palsied soul took to creating Christian parables for bloodless people.

He

He tossed the bayleaf into the mud and sprinkled ashes on his head. He forsook the verdant slopes of Olympus and went to sit on a dunghill. Then he sent for a photographer. Not that Tolstoy is not sincere. is, in fact, the sincerest man in the world to-day; his is the sincerity of fanaticism; the sincerity of the propagandist who has become so enslaved by a single idea that only one lobe of the brain works; the dangerous sincerity of a man without that healthy world-perspective which we call a sense of humor.

Putting aside his absurd theories of art, his pseudo-philosophic system, his enforced renunciation, Tolstoy still remains a wonderful man.

He

is as significant as Life itself. Nature hewed him out of her depths. She made him the slave of every vice and put in him the aspiration for every virtue. He is Goethe's Faust come to life-had he only Goethe's serene wisdom! In that wonderful book "My Confession" Tolstoy has given us the record of a soul's torture in hell. He has been gambler, drunkard, murdered, and lecher. These things in themselves and by themselves are nothing. Many have committed all the sins and smiled. But put in one half of a man's brain the consciousness of having committed all transgressions, and into the other half a flaming idealism, a gnawing night and day for release, and we have as a result the most august thing in the world: a human soul battling for its life. Tolstoy has been lashed, like Orestes, by the giant whips of the Furies, and look closely in his hair and you will see serpents twined there.

A life lived to the full, such as his, a life that has taken up and made its own all those magnificent, glittering sins, a life that has drained the bitter cup of Destiny to its filthy lees, that has not only seen all the evil under the sun, but which has been that evil-what else can it give the world but great art?

Into his novels and plays he has distilled himself. All great art aspires to philosophy, consciously or unconsciously-that is, all great art tends to explain life; all great art is a searchlight flung suddenly upon the soul of man, making plain the secret springs that move to action or thought, illuminating those secret recesses where he thinks he is most securely hidden from human gaze. In "Anna Karénina," "The Dominion of