The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-11-22
THEA TRICAL LETTER
 OF FRANKLIN FYLES

and she is allured almost to the extent of yielding; but there is a saving grace In her nAture--not due so much to re- ligIous influence, however, as to an aroused instinct of decency--and she refuses to rejoin him. For that he knocks her down and leaves her. Mrs. F'islo's skill is admirably effectual in this scene.
 Mind you. I am not at all inclined to be rhapsodic over 'Salvation Nell' as play. Some time or other, a genius will write a masterpiece in depletion of "settlement work" among the igno- rant. impoverished and thereby de. graded sinners of New York. Edward Sheldon has not done it for Mrs. Fiske. Years ago. in a tragic brevity, by Horace B. Fry. this brave actress made a poor. crude, slatterny, ill-be- havsd wife in our Italian quarter. . fascinatlngly ugly characterization Fry was a dabbler in literature,a crony of Booth and Jefferson, and he worked hard. very hard, to evolve a drama as strong through two or three hours as that one for half an hour; and I went summing with him repeatedly in his study of hungry and thirsty life on the East Side. He died with much tangl- ble wealth, hut none of the success in authorship for which he would have sliced off hunk of his material as- sets.
 Why does Mrs. Fiske use ''salyation NelP' knowing. as of course she does. that It Is not the big play that Is bound to come from Bowery life to Broadway mimicry? The answer prob ably Is that Nell Is the best Salvation lass she has found In the reading of many attempts to dramatize the soul as we'll as the body of an Hast Side crea- ture.
 The manuscript of 'tsaivation Nell. contains little more than the opportu4 nifty for Mrs Fiske to astonish audi. ences, or astound them, with realism In her own acting and the general presentation. The final third act Is as literal as the first, and p1easanter. The scene Is street in front of a Salva- ton Army barrack. A meeting is taking place. Nell is a speaker. None of the famous mobs in Julius Caesars' was ever made to behave more natur- ally as listeners to Antony's oration than this rough audience that NeH ad- dresses. Jim Platt sneaks into the rabble. He fears arrest for his assault upon her; but he hears her say. in her account of her own experience, that she forgives him. That converts him to decency. The play ends with Jim.
 Next Isadora Duncan. Naught mad be added to the printed account of her bold art in nudity: nor can the dis agreement as to whether she ought to be proud of herself or ashamed. be set- tied by argument; but I am bound to give some account of hee new colIab- oration with Walter Damrosch, by the ingenuity of which the Metropolitan Opera House, home of grand opera in It's most modish estate. was crowded throughout and fashionably.
 The Damrosch orchestra Is away lin at the top in New York's musical es- teem. Isadora danced in what she said--and no one could deny was the way that the Grecian girls, whom we see motionless in painting and scuIpt ure, used to be gracefully active The theatrical operators thought she seem. cd to satisfy all the demand there was for her artistic and artfui antics Then she went in cahoots with Damroschss: and was one of those who crowded in to see her dance the heroine in fhe opera of aIphIgenia in Auiis" while pamrosch'g orchestra played its rnu- sic. What about 1t? Well, the long. 1.-the. supple young woman looked like a veritabIe Greek goddess as she stood alone in the centre of vast stage, with her arms and shoulders Rleaming above acant drapery; and when she whiried into sweeping. spreading, outfiinging