The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-05-23

hysterical; the husband almost crazed
at this evidence of her unfaithfulness.
Nothing could be sadder than this
wreck of a home.
"The next act is to be like that of
the opening scene in 'Cyrano de Ber-
gerac,' except that the playhouse is a
modern metropolitan opera house in
stead of a French theater of several
centuries ago. On the stage the opera
of 'Traviata' is being sung, the music
enhancing. Among the row of boxes
filed with beautiful women, with
sparkling jewels, is one conspicuous
familiar figure, she of the two previ-
Gus scenes, in the New York mansion
and at the Newport villa.
Beside her are two men of the
world, each in conventional evening
dress. One is the army officer; the
other Beaumont.
1.-The curtains of the box part, the
face that appears is familiar: it has
the firm set lines Of the man who
stood by the hysterical woman in the
previous scene. There is challenge
of words.
"'When you were forbidden to come
to my house, how dare you come here?'
is a mans cry that rises above the
chorus of the opera and makes the box
the real stage that draws the eyes OF
the audience The beautiful woman in
the box, blushng crimson, gathers her
opera cape about her and hurries
through the foyer to her carriage.
''Then comes scene which l will
make graphic, the hasty second nup-
tials of the wife to save herself.
my last act, with the moral of it all.
the pathos of it ALL will show the child
rem torn from their mother, and the
husband and father bowed with grief
as bitter as that of King Lear when he
forsook home and kin and 'abjured all
roofs
II am studying very hard the part
of Mrs Harry Stone.
I'm every tragedy there is comedy.
I have not forgotten that in the con-
struction of my play Can't you see
the messenger boy p;cturesquely fit
ting through the plot? / can. Don t
you remember Mrs. Sloane's notes were
Intercepted? There is Mrs. Patricia
Swift, the introducer of mi!l.onaires
to the -Four Hundred There is Mrs.
chuyler-everybody knows
her. or has read about her. The 'mu-
tual friend?' He will be done to the
| life. AS for Pierre Beaumont and Cap
tain BERTHE BERTHE / propose to make
them realistic.
1.-THE Letters come from Chicago. 1t
seems to please people to poke fun at
lea.
But I confess that have seen moth
ing socially worse in Chicago, nor in
all my travels in the West, than this
Belmont-Sloane social scandal.
80 it seems to me to be just the
time to put this subject on the stage
in a way that will impress people with
the seriousness of divorce as an evil
threatening the whole structure OF
American society.
They speak of my native state of
Colorado as place where women can
do just as they please, as if the women
out there were all AmaZons.
They talk of Utah as a mans para
disc, where men may have all the social
liberty they like, as much as before
polygamy was supposed to be stl-
pressed.
II will acknowledge that divorces
out West-are almost as plentiful as
sunflowers are out West.
but New York is the hotbed where
the seeds of this poison weed have been
soWn. ~
"Statisticians say that there is a
divorce in the United States every hall
hour. Granted. l will grant, too. that
most of them are decreed out West
But trace the cause back. Are moi
| very. great number of them due tt
an intrigue in an Eastern ballroom oil
giided drawing room in New York;
while only the man and woman are
| concerned. divorce is bad enough
when there are children 1t is heart
| rending.
THAT is what I am making one OF
the most pathetic scenes in my drama
the tragedy of two lovely innocent
girls on whom the blight of their moth
ers' misdeeds falls. If they We're boys
they might live it down.
| .With girls-ah! the difference.
| "All the glamour of wealth, all the
prestige of a great family, can never
| quite remove the stain from such g
| stigma.
"Who knows but what such children
may inherit the same wickedness. I an
a great believer in heredity.
1T is not only the crimes for which
| people are imprisoned that are trans
| mitted in this way.
1.-The divorce sin will be handed down
| in the same way.
ANY one who has been in society
in any of the large, cities of this coun-
| try must have seen how the modern
social sins of fathers and mothers in
the highest society are working them
selves out in their children.
"My aim is to portray wildly this
rapid degradation of the hearthstone
Of America to Americans. l may fail
/ will try not to-
"KATHERYNE LETTER"
| w. L. Douglass 81 shoes in black and
| tan for gentlemen are world beaters