this did not in any way detract from the originality and the charm of the play itself. Although it is a fact that "Cyrano de Bergerac" is what it is solely because M. Coquelin is what he is, nevertheless the part was performed by many other actors; it was translated into half a dozen different languages; it was read with delight by all who appreciate pointed and polished verse; it lost nothing of its literary value from the circumstance that it had its origin in the poet's desire to write a great part for a great

actor.

The knowledge we chance to possess that M. Restand composed this play specially for M. Coquelin will explain the final act, which has puzzled not a few critics. Why does the hero die at the end of the play? Why should he die? The piece is called a "heroic comedy," and we do not expect to have a comedy end with a death scene. On the other hand, there is no real reason why Cyrano should not die—that is to say, there is no logical and necessary conclusion of the highly artificial story which would require the hero either to pass away in the fifth act or to survive to fight again some other day. This being the case, it is easy to see why M. Rostand chose to let the spectators behold the last moments of his hero. It gave him as fine a finish as any other possible termination; it enabled him to touch lightly the chords of pathos; and-above all-it supplied M. Coquelin with a death scene, more or less of a novelty even for that multifarious comedian who may often have envied Mme. Sarah Bernhardt the number of deaths which she has presented and which permitted her to draw easily upon the tears of all who heard her last speech and confession.

Perhaps a few of those who have been surprised that this heroic comedy should end as sadly as a tragedy may have wondered also why the old soldier Flambeau was allowed to occupy a disproportionate place in M. Rostand's other poetic drama, the "Aiglon," wherein he was not the chief figurewith the chief figure of which, indeed, his connection seems almost episodic. Could not the story of the masterful Napoleon's weakling son have been set forth without dragging in this ancient and loquacious warrior? Here, again, the explanation is easy when we are aware that Flambeau, al though not originally acted in Paris by M.

Coquelin, was actually written for him; and that the origin of the play is to be found in the fact that the actor had expressed to the poet his desire to appear as one of the faithful old guard of the great Emperor. The stalwart figure of the veteran, loyal to his master's memory as suggested by M. Coquelin, fascinated M. Rostand; but when the poet sought for a plot in which to set this character to work he was led irresistibly to the feebler form of the puny King of Rome, the impotent heir of a mighty name. the playwright worked out his story in scenes and acts, he found the princeling taking the centre of the stage and the old soldier becoming inevitably a subordinate character, full of color, no doubt, and very useful in building up the situations of the play, but no longer the focus of interest.

As

When we read Legouvé's "Memories of Sixty Years," we learn how "Adrienne Lecouvreur" came to be composed especially for Rachel, and we see why the heroine does not appear in the opening act of the play to which she gives her name and why she first comes in view clad in the costume of one of Racine's characters. And in the same interesting and instructive reminiscences M. Legouvé also records how he wrote a certain speech in his earlier piece, “Louise de Lignerolles," half a dozen times because Mlle. Mars insisted that it was not what it ought to be, until finally she told him that what she wanted was something like "la-lala-là." That is to say, her histrionic instinct made her feel the emotional rhythm of the proper speech for the character at that moment in the play; and Legouvé, having full confidence in her judgment, promptly set fit words to the tune she had indicated. Many another dramatist could recall instances of the unpremeditated effects he has achieved now and again by thus accepting the hints of his actors.

For example, we may read in the life of Bulwer Lytton how he listened to the advice of Macready and made over both the "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu" in accordance with the valuable advice which the actor gave him. So Mr. Bram Stoker has informed us how Henry Irving felt that Tennyson's "Becket," in the form in which the poet had published it, was not likely to succeed as a play, although it contained the superb figure of the martyred Cardinal which the actor-manager was longing to

personate. Finally, Irving saw the practicability of a few rather radical alterations, the suppression of a scene here and the writing of a new speech or two there. With fear and trembling, he took these suggestions to Tennyson; and the poet, longing for success on the stage, accepted them gladly, writing at once the added lines that the actor wanted and giving permission for the omissions and transpositions that Irving believed to be necessary. Here we find the actor rising almost to the level of the poet's collaborator; and it would be easy to collect many another illustration of this harmonious partnership between the creative and the interpretative artists. At least one more example may be noted here. The plot of "Gringoire," Banville's charming little play, was changed for the better by the author in consequence of suggestions from M. Coquelin, who first acted the part of the starving poet. The ingenious turn of the story toward the end of the piece was the suggestion of the comedian; and when he proposed this to the author, Banville asked scornfully, "Do you want me to write a play like Scribe?" M. Coquelin laughed and replied that this was just what he did want. "Oh, very well," said Banville, smiling in his turn, "that is just what I will do, then.”

Not only does the ingenious dramatist profit by every available suggestion of the actors, and not only does he take advantage of the special capabilities of the performers he may have in mind for this part or that; he is also moved sometimes to refrain from putting into his play scenes which are not likely to be properly acted by the special comedians whom he expects to personate certain characters. Sheridan was the manager of Drury Lane when he brought out his own "School for Scandal"; and every part in that glittering comedy was written particularly for the performers who first played it, and so clearly were they fitted that when a friend asked the author-manager why his comedy did not contain a love scene for the two characters whose marriage brings it to an end, Sheridan was ready with the obvious answer that Smith and Miss Hopkins could not make love. Now, Smith was the

original Charles Surface and Maria was first acted by Miss Priscilla Hopkins (afterward the wife of John Kemble).

Evidence of this adjustment of the story of a play to the limitations of the performers for whom it was intended can be found abundantly in certain of the comedies of John Lyly, written for the "Children of Paul's," one of the companies of boy-actors in vogue in the earlier days of Queen Elizabeth. In these polished pieces of suave rhetoric and artificial sentiment there is nothing of the terror and of the horror which characterized many of the contemporary plays written for the full grown performers of the regular theatres. There is no rude power, no rant, no bombast; all was decorous and pretty, not to say petty. There were no violent emotions to be expressed, likely to be too exacting for youthful inexperience of life. And this same artful adjustment of the story to the performers for whose use it was devised can be seen in the earliest English comedy that has come down to us, "Ralph Roister Doister," written by Udall, the master of Eton, for performance by his own pupils. For all its imitation of Plautus, this English comic play smacks of the soil; and it has an obvious likenessin its robust fun, in its frequent horse-play, and in its occasional snatches of songto the nondescript pieces which undergraduates undertake for their own pleasure to-day.

In fact, the more closely we study the history of dramatic literature, and the more sharply we analyze the structure of the masterpieces of the drama, the more firmly we become convinced that the dramatic poets of every age and of every race have never failed to weigh scrupulously the gifts, the deficiencies and the special qualities of the several performers upon whom they had to rely for the proper presentation of their plays to the public. And they found their profit in so doing. Mme. de Sévigné accused Racine of "writing plays for La Champsmeslé and not for posterity." No doubt Racine was guilty of the charge; but, as it has happened, the plays that fitted Mlle. de Champsmeslé have succeeded also in retaining the admiration of posterity.

I

HAVE often wondered why, in household journals, the Suggestions for Housekeepers are not put into the same column with the jokes. Surely they belong there, unless, indeed, they should have a specific title of their own, as, for instance, Practical Jokes. Practical jokes they certainly are, and that of a low order; for a maximum of diabolic suggestion set forth in cozening terms that hide their real intent, they know no equal. I recall a specific for cleaning straw hats, warranted to make them in late August more beautiful than in early June, and I recall the sailor upon which I tried it,-a straw so fine that it had wound itself into my inmost being with its suggestion of the heart of Italy, of women and young girls, in skirts of red or skirts of blue, wandering down the cypress-bordered roads with busy fingers, braiding, braiding.

Suggestions for House-keepers

The mixture recommended did bleach the hat and I proudly wore it in a public place. It was not until, in some swift motion, the soft braids began to drop about my neck, that I grasped the real meaning of those specious suggestions. The drastic fluid, as it was probably intended to do, had eaten away all the thread wherewith the straw was bound.

I recall too, with emotions somewhat softened from their earlier rage by the passage of time, those lucid directions in regard to mending rent gowns with court plaster; that demure statement that pure ammonia will remove dirt from picture frames: it will, and afterward you remove the frames; those subtle hints that black silk can be treated with a solution of gum-arabic. It can, but I earnestly beg that no one will try it because it is mentioned here. Thank heaven for the rag man in a world so rife with household suggestions! Then there was that plausible recipe for taking out ink stains, which I tried in all innocence. Fluff had inadvertently dipped her tail into my ink-well, and then had seated herself with an air of conscious virtue upon the prettiest bedspread. Perhaps this was for me but fitting punishment, for it was Higgins's

Eternal Ink, a blatantly presumptuous name, worthy of swift nemesis. It came. The eradicator slowly but surely eradicated so much of the bedspread as the cat had blackened, and the hand of the law could not reach the anonymous suggestor, whose evil communication had ruined one of our treasures. They are cowardly, one and all, these disturbers of the peace of homes; their paragraphs are rarely signed, even with initials, and so they go uncaught and unpunished.

Speaking of Fluff reminds me of another wheedling, treacherous article: "How to Make an Inexpensive Home for Kitty." It was intended to mislead just such foolish dwellers in suburban houses as I am, people with pastoral tastes, caught half-way between brick walls and green fields, who have no shelter but the doorstep to offer their small flocks. Following the directions to the letter, I made a home for Kitty; as for its being inexpensive, that depends on what you call expensive. At the end of the day the account stood as follows:

Wasted: One huge wooden box.
5 yards waterproof cloth.
I package of nails.

4 hours of good time.

Broken: One saw.

I gimlet.

I commandment. Lost: One hammer.

I temper.

In regard to the effect on Kitty, it was the one thing of which I ever saw her afraid. She shunned it with a wary eye, and tiptoed past it with hair starting slightly on tail and back. It was evidently to her the lair of some mysterious enemy, worse than a dog or her dream of a dog; one could almost have written an article on pre-human superstitions from watching her at these times. The one occasion when, with certain remarks about the serpent's tooth, which I have faith to think she did not understand, I put her inside, her terror was so pitiable that I never repeated the experiment. A Home for Kitty, forsooth! As if any one who thought for a moment would not realize that as sensible a

If

The worst of it is, you do not think. the foregoing instances do not suggest some subtle, undermining influence at work on the mind, they have been recounted in vain. There is something so pointed, so plausible in the way in which these hints are given, that you are immediately deprived of will. Talk of auto-suggestion and of hypnotism! The hints to house-keepers are as cogent as the former, as fertile in criminal possibilities as the latter. As for me, who am only too inventive in thinking up suggestions of my own, they reinforce my worst weakness, win me where I am already lost. The domestic life is not my profession; it is my play, my avocation, a sheltered pasture land where my mind unharnesses and frisks. In our household we have neither old people to be considered, nor young for whom an example must be set; our old-fashioned cottage is full of opportunities, so, as if there were not freaks enough in our antic house-keeping without help from outside, we become the peculiar prey of those who lead captive silly

women.

As proof that temporary mental aberration is caused by this foul means I cite the case of the matting. I am a person of common sense; "my pulse as yours doth temperately beat time." Would not any sane human being know better than to believe a mendacious article in which an unknown author asserted that a worn matting could be freshened and made beautiful by varnish, varnish in which burnt umber had been stirred in order to give a richness of color? Fired by a vision of a floor artistic beyond the reach of the mere decorator, with subdued brown tints that would bring out the rich colors of the rug, I fell. The toil involved no one could understand save Tantalus, or a college professor, or any other whose life work is to fill up emptiness.

"Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve

And be liege lord of all the elves and fays" to do what that nameless and shameless woman said. Quart after quart of varnish the hungry matting ate; no Spenser dragon ever swallowed half so much of anything; the leech's daughter never cried so loudly for more, and then

I have told of the dream; I lack speech to tell of the result—an orange-colored horror

trable, making a floor as of corn-ears tightly pressed together. It might do for a granary floor; it would make an admirable background for Ceres; it would be suitable in an allegory,-it was impossible in a house. The room had to be carpeted, at great trouble and large expense, and I could not send the bill to the lady that caused the mishap.

Why do I not resist, you say? Alack and well-a-day, I cannot! The only suggestion I ever resisted was that in regard to staining a lace waist brown by dipping it into coffeea base use for a noble beverage. These people play upon something so deep down in my nature that I cannot get at it to discipline it. There is no need of these economies. I earn in another fashion, I was about to say, an honest living, but that is perhaps a strong term to apply to an occupation which means the working of one mind upon others. It is, I know not what, some primitive feminine instinct, a far-off inheritance from the stage of web-weaving spiders, of nest-building birds, a desire to create, to make something of nothing. Pre-human, I think the impulse is, pre-animal, for all I know, the old, old stir of life facing "chaos and old night," to do, to act, to meet the emergency. Through how many generations of contriving mothers does it reach back to Mother Nature herself, with her untiring enthusiasm for making new things out of old?

It comes upon me unawares, when my mind is tired of trying to create out of the abstract, when my fingers long for the tangible. For months, perhaps, I resist, I ignore, thinking the longing dead. Then an idle day, the note of a bird, and I am off, like a leaf driven before the wind. When the fit comes on, I feign sanity, am businesslike in manner, hear all that is said to me, and reply promptly. My mind is remote, however, brooding over the yet-tobe, the old made new. I, who dislike new things, new faces, new clothes, even latterly I fear, new ideas, see a way to keep the old, yet have it forever fresh. With a cunning which does not belong to me I conceal my materials and my intentions, for my family early frowned upon these tendencies; then, as soon as all eyes are turned, I am away. While I work my spirit is free; I have fingertips of unimaginable skill; habitations fit for the gods arise from scattered chips at my feet. I am ashamed to think how much

inspiration I can get out of a small can of white paint. I doubt if Apollo himself had more rapture in tinting the roseate dawn. Worn cloth becomes new; broken wood becomes alive again; the world is fresh and young in these moments of passionate recreation, which last until the task is done, and I see the results. Of these, the less said the better. Waking from inspiration is never pleasant I fancy, whether it is an immortal poem, or an aged waste-basket that is being done over. Tired, ashamed, I fall to earth,-I who was but a few minutes ago a winged creature, and patiently pack into our Salvation Army box the remains of the garments I have ripped into bits in my moments of creative fury.

If I

Now, this is an arraignment as well as a confession, and there are larger aspects of the matter than the merely personal. choose to impoverish myself with economies it is no matter, for I have no heirs. But there are doubtless many others, as weak before suggestion as I, women whose follies may have more serious consequences than do my own. Is there no remedy? Women are proverbially without sense of humor, and we shall never know that these things are jokes until they are so labelled. Perpetual victims of a comedy of intrigue, where each trick is as vicious and as unconnected with the others as an episode in a comedy by Ben Jonson, we cry out for protection. As there are forms of hazing which rightly bring their perpetrators within jurisdiction of the courts, so there are forms of household suggestion which should lead to imprisonment and fine. 'Tis ignoble to trade on human weakness; moreover, it is an Iago-like and causeless villainy, done in mere wantonness. What satisfaction can it bring them, who never see the desecrated hearths, the materials they despoil, the homes they deface? Would that I could assign our tormentors to their proper circles in a new Inferno-the malicious tricksters in paints and stains in the innermost circle; the spoilers of good dress stuffs in the next.

At this moment I see my weakness and know how many good golden coins have gone the path of folly, and yet, and yet, the impulse is ever at work in my mind. Tucked in between inquiries as to the influence of Rousseau on Thoreau goes on the old ceaseless questioning: How to repair the Persian saddle-bag myself. I storm the gates of the

impossible in practical matters, and no matter how many times I leave my body by the wall, it always rises and acts again. I am sane at this moment, but, when next spring comes, and the hylas peep, I shall arise and follow my folly. Who knows what? Not I! Perhaps some glib writer will have suggested how to make beautiful shrubbery out of feather dusters, or lasting sunshades out of colored tissue paper. I shall fail, but while I try I shall know the rapture of creation.

O

NE of the best essays of the admirable Emerson is that which begins with a list of the acknowledged great who have done nothing to which their admirers can point as requiring the acknowledgment. "Somewhat resided in these men," concludes the good Ralph Waldo, “which begot an expectation which outran all their performance." So Joubert and Matthew Arnold of the French "authorities." "That weight in the speaker (auctoritas), which the ancients talk of, is to be found in Bossuet more than in any other French author; Pascal, too, has it, and La Bruyere; even Rousseau has something of it, but Of "Authority" Voltaire not a particle." And, in quite a different sphere, take the essay of the late Lord Salisbury on the younger Pitt, one of the essays which filial piety has of late rescued from the limbo of the "irresponsible, indolent reviewers" and enabled us to identify, and of which Carlyle expressed his envious admiration by saying they were "so quietly worded," quietness of wording not being the mark of the political deliverances of the sage of Chelsea himself. It was of these latter deliverances, in fact, that Taine observed that their author "has the superior smile, the resigned condescension of a hero who feels himself a martyr, and he only quits it to shout at the top of his voice, like an ill-taught plebeian." Perhaps the aristocratic "quietness of wording" gave some tincture of the "auctoritas" of the ancients to the noble marquis himself. At any rate, when an American, disappointed of hearing him in the House of Lords, asked an English acquaintance whether Lord Salisbury was "a good speaker," the Englishman's answer was pertinent to our present theme. "No, a bad speaker, but a weighty speaker. It always seems as if he were saying, 'This, me luds, is the kind of statement which, for