The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-11-04
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

And it's true enough.
You'll find all kinds of limitations.
Both on the stage and off.
And in what is sometimes strangely
enough called real life"
What is real life by the way.
How do you know that you ARE?
your being?
That the things you see and touch
are actual to your vision and your
feelings.
Aren't dreams as realistic as what
we think and do and say in our wax
ing hours?
How do we know that the dreams
aren't the real and what we think the
real the dream.
How many times the writer has
quoted Lafcadio Hearn to the effect
that there is nothing so ghostly as
ourselves" she doesn't now remember.
But it's worth quoting often.
And thinking about oftener.
For after all it's only a matter of
time when you will crumble to dust
and be trampled under the feet of the
multitude or dug up by some fair maid
en- in her garden when she starts the
seeds in the spring.
Did you ever think of the ten mil
upon whom you constantly walk?
Whom you wipe off the piano with
the dustless buster and drink down
from the sanitary fountain?
Everything's strange and eyrie and
uncanny and weird if you stop to
think long enough.
It's a good thing we have the vaude-
vile, the elections and other diver
sions or the insane asylums would
burst their walls.
Recall, in instance, those of you who
haunt the purlieus of the Chautauqua,
of the near-scientist who demonstrate
ed a few years ago with curious ex-
periments which showed the inver-
sion of all things
How, really, everything is upside
down and not at all as right side up
as you may think.
But to return.
That imitation is the sincerest flat
terry is illustrated every day.
Let new writer come into notice.
One with an original style, a new
point of view, a unique manner of eX-
preston.
In a shorter time than it takes to
think a dozen imitators will spring,
mushroom-like, from the four points of
the compass.
Every magazine editor will be on
the still-hunt for 'em.
And the publishers will hang out
their high signs.
Let some genius, as Whistler, orr
ginate a method.
Hosts of dabblers will try to emu
late him.
Everybody has sat through Wagner
ian limitations. Little musical initiative
has been shown since his time. The
latter-day schools are merely Wagner
ian variations.
Unless it is the neo-French.
And they are evolved from the Wag-
merriam ideal or at least the great COM
poser's idea.
Go to the playhouse.
Especially the vaudeville.
Imitation there flourishes as rankly
and lushly as the weeds in tropical
forest Sit out, week after week, the
Offerings" therein and yor will be-
come obsessed with the sterility of
the human mind-that portion of it
which is so exploited-the barrenness
of the mental initiative. The truth is
the recall should be executed in the
playhouse as no other where.
Not one time in ten do you find orr
ginality of conception, fecundity of
idea.
And when you dds it appreciated?
Not always.
Not long ago there was presented in
our local vaudeville house a sketch
is, as to plot. 1t concerned the great
human virtue of remuneration.
OF heroic sacrifice.
A sacrifice so noble as to be Christ
like.
Although this motif was so entan-
gled in a skein of comedy as to be
scarcely obvious.
The writer does not remember the
name of the sketch, but it concerned
two down and out actors and the offer
from manager to one, and the pray
er of the actors former sweetheart,
now the wife of an old friend who had
betrayed the actor, to permit her hus-
band to take the part that had been
offered to the former since it would
save her baby from starvation.
The mental struggle that followed
and the final great sacrifice of the &C
tor was as fine thing as need be seen
on any stage.
1t was necessarily inadequately pre-
sented in its condensed form. The &C
tors were good but had to burlesque
the larger part of the action in order
to make it acceptable to their vaude-
vile audience.
Here was an original idea.
But it was not overwhelmingly re-
ceived.
And herein lies the ira gedy of art
Like Christ they will not receive"
it.
But there are other limitations.
One was given in Madison Square
garden the other evening when a des-
perate effort was made to "whoop it
up" for Wilson as it was for Roosevelt