Los Angeles herald., 1905-10-29
Barrie's "Pefer Pan"

TT IS something to have heen a child
there is not such an aw-
full lot in being grown
up as we come to learn after
ward. That is the lesson of Barrie's
Peter Pan" The gold in the days of
youth is not an assayable quality. It's
a dastardly trick that would examine
every bit of the roe; yes, with all the
biting acids of experience, the ore of
the one time in life that wants no
examination, no experience, the only
time i'm the little span of human life
nor gold, nor life, nor ambition, but
only to live.
To have had that poor little boon
untouched, to be able to say that you
had really lived, that the day dreams Of
childhood had not been blown as bub-
bles by the scientific childbreath or the
queer fads of infantile enIightment
and education-is that passing from us
entirely? A magazine writer asked the
other day: why is it that you never
hear people talk nowadays of their
childhood?" Perhaps they never had
any childhood. perhaps they We're born
not children at all, but just little adults.
Mr.. Barries story of peter PAN"
or "The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up"
is first and above all things a play that,
above and beyond it's entertaining quail
tiles, is an appeal to the child heart to
look back upon itself The last night
that it was produced in London the
house was jammed from pit to dome,
and when, in the course of the play,
Peter Pan came down to the footlights
and, with his hands outstretched TO the
audience, declared that Tinker Bell, his
fairy companion, was dying, and the
only thing that would save her was
ffTs 40 To I,1i,. holt 1.F
in fairies.
CLAP your hands," he cried, ito show
that you believe in fairies!"
Then a wonderful thing happened.
This crowded theater of grown-ups,
this multitude of sophisticated theater-
goers, instead of scoffing at and scorn-
ing the chiIdishness of it, instead Of
smiling cynically at the thought broke
into applause and Tinker Bells life
was saved.
Wasn't something more than the life
of the good fairy saved by the ap-
plause? Wasn't the belief saved that
no matter how hard and apparently
matter-of-fac we become, human ma
ture is the same at heart and only
wants the right touch to open up It's
stories of poetry and sentiment? A
distinguished disciple of Emerson, who
saw the play in London, declared that
here was a work that followed no ac-
cepted form of playwriting, that in It's
great simplicity almost created a form,
and yet it made children of men, the
finest test of art.
Mr.. Barrie is the third great literary
man who in our day has done this
thing, and done it so well that the
great movement for abolition of the
fairies, and the cramming of children's
heads with hard facts, has received
an unconscious check Mr.. Barries
name goes with those of Robert Steven
son and Kenneth Graham in the open
ing up of the wonderful mind of the
child to the lessening poetic magma
tion of the adult. He more than of
the three has emphasized the beauty of
SteVenson's words:
childhood must pass away and then
youth, as surely as age approaches.
The true wisdom is to be always sea-
sonable, and to change with a good
grace in changing circumstances. To
love playthings well as child, to lead
an adventurous and honorable youth,
and to settle, when the time arrives,
into a green and smiling age, is to be
good artist in life and deserve well
of yourself and your neighbor."