thought many times before. What do all lunatics think?

Presently he caught himself laughing quietly, and was in terror. Coming out of Mr. Gray's office, he slipped along the deserted row of desks near the eastern wall, and so finally got to the lockers at the far end of the long room. He put on his hat and stole through the door. There were only two or three other peo

"Well, how are you, Mr. Hamlin?" he called eagerly over the heads of two men in front of the fugitive.

"Very well, Adam, thank you," he mumbled, wondering if he was answering correctly. "And how are you?" "Oh, me? I'm fine."

Down-stairs, rushing out on the sidewalk into the midst of the surging crowds, he let himself be carried up on beyond

Times Square. The solidity of the shoulders that bumped him back and forth, the power of a man as emphasized by the tremendous momentum of many together, were exquisite comforts to him.

"These are not bugs," he said to himself, laughing out hysterically. A woman jammed against his side looked at him quickly, drew away uneasily.

As far up Broadway as Columbus Circle the narrow thoroughfare was still filled with people. Central Park was his destination, and he turned into its southwestern gate. Presently he came to the Mall; and, passing through that, descended those splendiferous stone steps with the lilies and doves and cupids carved into their side walls. He stopped a moment at a fountain that gurgled joyously as it spouted twinkling little streams into the air. Crossing the bridge that humps its back like a sleepy cat, and stumbling over the hill to his right,

he came to the hidden cove that he was looking for. Some pair of lovers had dragged a bench down to the very edge of the water. Walter sat down. At last he was alone.

Even in the daytime the middle of Central Park is quiet and calm. Now he heard the faintest ripple along the shore a dozen yards away. Above and about him the April leaves, too young yet to rattle, were rustling tinily like soft silk. The spring wind was playing gayly over the park with the large green odors of the trees and the pretty party-colored odors of the scattered flower-beds. The lake was latticed with shimmering silver bands made by the lights set all around its circling shores. Across the water clustered the flotilla of boats in which the city's children voyage around the mysterious wooded bends to make good their hopes.

Walter sat very still, lest he again disturb a flock of ducks lying asleep on the

small, rocking waves near by. For the moment his mind was clean of the fear that had driven him from the office; was rid of the vague plan that had made him seek out this deeper part of the lake. Time was slipping by, and he was glad; when 3 o'clock came he would go back to the office, get his things, and, like the children in the boats, turn another hopeful bend.

After a while the Metropolitan towerclock down at Twenty-third Street laid three tremendous strokes across New York, and Walter leaped to his feet. He hurried out of the park and down the strangely quiet Broadway. When he slipped inside The Chronicle building's revolving doors it was 3.30 o'clock.

"You haven't got a story for to-day's paper, have you, Mr. Hamlin?" asked Adam in the elevator, worried about him, knowing it was too late for that. "No, indeed."

"Something special, I guess?" "Yes.".

There was no one on the sixteenth floor except Sharkey, the office boy left behind to gather up and put away the editorial ink-wells and glue-pots and precious scissors, and to sort out and tie up into bundles the day's local and telegraph copy. Having done the first part of his work, he stood at a desk doing the last half. The green-shaded lamp in front of him was the only light turned on. The long room that had been so clean at noon was now a dirty wallow of littered paper and other débris of thirty or forty men too busy to be tidy. The dead air was thick and sour with stale tobacco smoke. The Irish boy was spasmodically singing and dancing to keep himself company in this dim loneli

ness.

and stacking in convenient piles for transportation these little leavings of the fifteen best years life could give him. But he could not take them all with him; some must be thrown on the floor with the other litter. His aged, blunt-pointed scissors, he could not forsake them. He and OneDrink Archie O'Toole had shared them; their co-partnership names were bitten into the inside of the blades with the acid of the ink they had used. And Archie was now the paper's London man with full charge of all the paper's European service.

Here was a musty, mouse-nibbled scrapbook in which he had proudly pasted his front-page stories when he was a cub; there were many of them. The stiff, yellow pages spoke to him, and he sat down and commenced going over his splendid first years with them.

"Mr. Hamlin," called out Sharkey suddenly, a little guiltily. "Yes, Sharkey?'

"The managing editor gave me a note to put in your box just before he left. Maybe you'd like it now. Gee, I nearly forgot it."

Running to the mail-boxes on the wall, he brought an envelope and, laying it down by the gray-haired, boy-faced man, went back to the end of the row of desks and set to work again. Walter read it.

"DEAR WALTER: Good heavens, man, you reconsider that resignation business; we can't lose you. See me to-morrow. Don't fail. VARICK."

"Sharkey," Walter called softly. "Yes, sir."

“Get me a last edition.”

His story was in the centre of the front

N actor long known as one of our foremost artists was lately playing at the Garrick Theatre, New York, which is under the management of a leading producer and has long been associated with the higher order of drama. Repeatedly when he embarked in a taxi-cab from a prominent restaurant for his evening's performance, the Broadway pathfinder blandly inquired where the Garrick might be. Finally, in a mood of humorous indignation, the actor said: "Why, don't you know? It is where John Mason is starring in the new Bernstein piece." "Beg pardon, mister," said the cabby; "you'll have to put me wise to them ginks too."

In telling the story Mr. Mason remarks that there may be something in the idea that the play business has been spoiled by the overbuilding of theatres.

Some fifteen years ago, when the once portentous theatrical syndicate was forming, there were seventeen producing-houses in New York. To-day there are over forty. Yet the managers complain that it is impossible to make the public aware of the appearance of a new play or star! Several first-class theatres have opened their doors to moving-picture shows. One of the most successful managers lately predicted that in the near future the rest of them would be converted into garages for storing the motor-cars of the people who attend them. The conditions are similar throughout the country.

For many years there has been a revolt against Broadway and all that it stands for. We are familiar enough with the cry that the drama has been debased by being commercialized. To-day, after all allow ances are made for the exaggerations of humor, or of despair, the fact is clear enough that the drama has become not only inartistic but uncommercial.

This fact has given the revolt a new point of attack. In times past the demands of the more intelligent public could

be safely disregarded, and the result was that remonstrance was loud-and none too good-tempered. Of late the manager has become willing to listen to the voice of the intelligent. And so the voice of the intelligent has become gentle, their attitude helpful and kind. Yet the revolt is none the less a revolt for being welldirected and well-mannered.

The concrete result is that New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and many other centres, have organizations, the object of which is to co-operate with the managers in making good plays succeed. Already the movement has more than justified itself; but if we take into account the inner needs and ultimate possibilities of the situation it will be evident, I think, that as yet it is only in its first tentative beginnings. Out of the despair of the manager has risen a hope for art-loving playgoers. Whether or not the automobile public continues in its devotion to the "movies," the people who are behind the drama-league movement foresee a time when an increasing number of good plays will be offered to the patronage of intelligent public not only in the big cities but in the one-night stands.

The movement has of late received an impetus from the formation of an organization along thoroughly new lines in the theatrical metropolis. Before many seasons are past, it is hoped, the methods of the New York organization will be understood and powerfully aided in every city and town in the land.

To gain a clear idea of these methods it is necessary to trace the origin of the conditions which they have been devised to meet. A few years ago the overbuilding of theatres was very plausibly explained. Every attempt to dissolve the theatrical syndicate legally had been frustrated by one of those quaint constructions of the antitrust law which bid fair to make the name of Sherman famous. Only one recourse remained. An independent band of managers paralleled the pipe-line, so to

speak, and not only gained a foothold in all the leading cities but was able to force the policy of the open door upon one-night stands. Admittedly there were not plays and audiences enough to fill all the houses new and old; but the more hopeful felt that in the course of time the theatrical public would grow to fit the shell that commercial rivalry had made for it.

The defeat of the syndicate, however, far from putting an end to the building of theatres, has apparently speeded it up. Now that the field is open to new managers, new managers are springing up on every side each with his producing house or houses. Every season of late New York has witnessed the opening of from three to half a dozen theatres, and the reluctant town is threatened with four or five more. James Huneker once called the newspaper critics a chain-gang; but at the worst they then wore their common fetters only two or three evenings a week. Before the middle of the past season one of the New York critics deposed that he had seen and reviewed over eighty performances an average of five a week. The total of dramatic productions for the year was one hundred and eightyIs it strange that art lacks distinction and business lacks effective advertisement?

one.

From the point of view of the native playwright the situation has one very hopeful aspect. The opening of new houses, together with a falling off in the supply of export drama from Europe, threw wide to him the door of opportunity. Hopeful souls looked for the birth of a worthy national drama. American plays there have been in plenty, and many of them have had a strong appeal to the public. New themes have been broached, grave and gay, many of them full of intrinsic possibilities. But the sad fact seems to be that the sudden increase of playwrights, actors, and producers has brought a general lowering of artistic standards. If anything worthy of the name of dramatic literature has appeared in the offing it has escaped the hopeful eye. To put the case concretely, no playwright has challenged the eminence of our leading dramatists of the older order, Mr. Augustus Thomas and the late Clyde Fitch. With the multiplication of theatres the drama has become a machine-made commodity handled whole

sale, whereas art is essentially an individual and retail product.

To get some sense of the difference one has only to think back fifteen years to the days of Augustin Daly and the stock company at the old Lyceum Theatre. Whether a decline had already set in from the days of the older stock companies I can not say; but one was at least certain of finding a generaily able revival of the old comedy and a well-modulated performance of the modern school of English drama, then in its heyday. Amid all our reduplication of theatres there is now no house with which the classical tradition is associated and no house devoted to the more modern school of English comedy-Shaw, Galsworthy, and the rest. Among some forty theatres of the first class there are only two or three which make even a pretence of regarding the drama as an art.

Frequently in the mad scramble to keep the many theatres open a single manager has three or four pieces in rehearsal at the same time. He scorches from house to house in a taxi-cab, making a suggestion here, a command there, and leaving stagemanager, author, and actors to make the best of ideas which they only partly grasp or, grasping them, regard as of very doubtful value. Recently, after a play had been produced, a manager decided that an entire third act was wrong, and ordered it rewritten. The author expired, and a play doctor was called in. There was not time for him to witness a performance or even to read the prompt-book, which was so cut and scrawled over as to be almost illegible. So the stage-manager outlined the story and sketched the suggested third act. Over night the first aid evolved it. It was a very good act, as he himself admits; but it had certain drawbacks-for which he was obviously not to blame. A lady who in the first act had been of the most dubious reputation was transformed under his touch to an angel of sweetnessand light. That defect was remediable; but after the performance an actress to whose mother the manager owed a debt of gratitude went into hysterics because her "great scene" in the third act had disappeared. There was no way to interpolate the scene into the new act; and so, owing to this wholly adventitious and most unfortunate circumstance, the play failed. According to the latest reports, the author is still dead.