The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-06-14
BY FRANKLIN FYLEs.

lines of a church in the midst of foil
age. Low, slow bells chime sOlemnly.
mans complaining voice passes from
tnarticIlate walls into understandable
words. He takes shape as he arises
erect from prOstratiOn, shakes his fists
toward heaven and curses God for the
death Of his babe, long ago, by drown
ing in the sedge of the pool that by
this time is discoverable. A woman
next appears indistinctly. In a scared
voice she warns the man of dreadful
consequences TO come of his blasphemy.
God has drowned my child. and
therefore God curse" he says. when
the lilies of this pond. which took her
from me. bring her back alive, then 1
will adore the God whom l now hate"
A faint infantile Outcry is heard be-
tween the strokes of the bell. The
woman discovers a babe in the water
among the lilies, and places it in the
arms~Of the man.
THE Almighty has restored my
child" he says. II bow to thank and
worship him"
The church chime rings louder, a
slightly lighter illumination shows in
silhouette the man with the babe in his
arms, and the curtain falls on a scene
that has lasted only five minutes.
What sort of a drama would you ex-
pect 10 follow that prologue have de-
scribed? Something awesome, it APP
peared to me; yet nothing religious or
metaphysical came of the mans def
ance of God and his apology. After
nineteen years he was an Italian music
master who had written an opera,
which a pupil stole and produced as
his own. The author had taken the
ha IA IN IA in, Of he
dead one. and she had grown up to
ne the plays heroine. There was a
slump from the five minutes of singu-
larity to two hours and a half of COM
monplace. The girl loved a romantic
strOlling player; was pestered by an
amOrous scOundrel; found out that he
had triel to drown her when a babe
to inherit her wealth; that it was he
who stole the opera; that she was heir
ess to a title as well as a fortune; and
for the upshOt virtue vanquished vice
triumphantly. So here once more was
a play billed as new, but so old that,
instead of having been written for
Mildred Holland" il may as well have
been a translation of one of a thou
sand European plays that carry their
principal girls through vicissitudes of
Vagrancy to aristOcratic wealth.
Once again we have that fond fallacy
of theatrical mental phenomena, assert
ed as the crucial factor in pncOunted
plays. but never yet so much as dis
cussed in the schools, that paternal in
Stinct, guided in no way by circum-
stances, can enable a father to identify
an adult daughter whom he hasn't seen
since she was newborn. People who
go to the theatres have got past the
time when stage fiction didn't have to
gee with human nature. The audience
giggled when the proud Earl of Ken
more took the lOwly Lolita in his arms
and cried, Me long lost cheild-"
Not yet have / told you what sort of
a New York audience "A Paradise of
Lies" is offered to. Mildred Holland
goes starringly around her orbit with
out hitting New York often. I was
charmed by her uncommon talent We
wise fools of Gotham go to see in a
bowl and if the bowl were bigger, our
views would be broader; and we would
know that our narrow bigotry keeps
much genius under idiOtic taboo. Mil
dred edges into our town at an aside
theatre, and the audience that 1 sat
in with was not of a critical DISPOSE
ton. Yet (and playwrights may as
we'll take notice. it was affected prop
erly by a weak spot in the plot that,
not so very long ago, would have
passed without cavil The father of
the heroine had spent a dozen years
on an opera. Every word and note