The San Francisco call., 1898-01-30

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 It strikes me as rather important that The Girl from Paris" which is planned especially for the entertain ment of the worldly, which is now near ing it's 1000th performance in London, and in it's second season in New York, should come all the way to San Fran cisco to no better purpose than to make a hoosiers' holiday. During the first part of the Golden Jubilee week, while our country cousins were with us thousands strong, the Baldwin was a place to be crushed and stifed in; but now, as the town resumes some thing of it's normal size and taste, night by night the rows of empty seats creep closer to the stage. This is not an encouraging outlook for a three weeks engagement and unless some thing extraordinarily compelling is done in the way of advertising-so1p thing that will make the show so talked about that the people who have not seen it will not be able to stay away from it-I am sure that we will get another black eye in New York, where already we are considered un- certain, coy and hard to please.
 
 I do not see where the critics can be of further assistance: for the ones who write fiction and say that this is a love- lyshow are so prosy and unimaginative In the manner of their prevarication that they do even less good than the ones who tell the truth about the pro duction and give credit to the little in 1t that is good. q do not mean to be disrespectful to any of my colleagues; therefore it seems safer and wiser and politer to imply that they prevaricate rather than that they really think ''The Girl from Paris" is all they crack it up to be). What is needed is a press agent of electrical enterprise who will seize upon the sensational r~ ssibilities of the piece and the company and hypnotize the editors of the local newspapers into the belief that the performance de- serves the attention of the press.
 
 brilliant press agent would have little difficulty in convincing the av- craze editor that things happen in "The Girl from Paris" which deserve long columns of moral rebuke; some editors would even permit him to write the moral rebuke himself and set it off with photographic corroboration. The mere praise that the disinterested crit lie lavishes on the funny German of Harry Hermsen, the firecracker major of J. C. Marlowe, the quartet of fresh Iy scrubbed and tailored young men and the good-looking young women is not sufficient to lure the town from its fireside these chill nights. A press agent is needed who will tell how near The Girl from Paris" approaches the limit of the law, why some of the jokes and some of Edgar Halstead's Hfelike antics in the Scottish kilt would make sailor blush, where the clever French man and his cane and his kisses pass the bounds of niceness, and how many yards of lingerie and legs are used in D he entire performance.
 It is upon the lively ampliication of such details as these that success de bends. You or I might discuss al grave length the fatty degeneration o1 the drama that turks in hybrid musi- cal vaudeville farces and never be the means of sending a single person tc the Baldwin. A specialist is needed some one who will either denounce O, titllate the subject with a swift, au- thoritative pen. I can see him doing 8 full page, with illustrations, on The EvoIutions of Nineteenth Century Pant alettes as Traced by Professor Edward E. Rice; another on The Dangers of .= Chinese Laundry Starch as Discovered s by a Lady Member of 'The Girl from : Paris" company; another on How Ma :: mic GilrCy Plays Her Part Without : Getting Rheumatism.
 I don't know of a press agent this side of New York who is equal to the emergency. Those we have here, with one exception (now my life is safe) are slow, sorry lot who couldn't mus ter the imagination of a policeman nor write a paragraph in coherent English if their lives depended on it. The pub- lie has vague idea that the press is imposed on by the press agents. Why the local press agent, bar that lone ex- ception, couldn't impose on the office boy of a newspaper; it is not in the mechanism of a linotype to set the