The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-14
POLL PLAYERS IN THE WITcHING HOUR Gus Thomas Thrilling Play
 Beautifully Staged and Splen-
 didly Presented to Large
 Audiences

The W1tchtnK Hour. by Gus Thomas, will thrill you. will take you into the strange netherworld of the mind, will tell you powerful story of love and hate and hope and vic. tory. all ending in a dramatic moral that men are what. they think. and senger of evil which may be realized in the evil acts of others. If not in 0ne's own.
 In four acts and two beautiful stage pictures is The Witching Hour' pre- sented all this week. at Polls. A large house saw the opening per- forTnauces, yesterday afternoon and noiiten quality of the company and TsIepathy is that quality of mind Or force in nature by which thought ie transmitted from one mind to an other,
 Hypnotism is that strange force by which one mind is enabled to inflict other to ttS will s. s,s
 The books tell of wonderful condi- tt0ns in which some persons Abnor- mally constituted cannot endur0 the sight of certain objects, or are driven to frenzy by the sight of the hated thing. Napoieon detesteds cats Cath erine de Meatci asudderSd at the
 All of these motives, not super natural, but beyond ordinary expert ence are woven into The WitChing Hour. not by way Of artffice, un- naturally, but as warp and wool and body of the tale that is acted.
 Jack Brookeld r. rambler, ex- loves Helen whippIe. wAose son, Clay Whipple sis the fiance Of Broolkne1d'a 'a niece. Viola Campbell. One, Tom Deuntng, sweeps for an instance Into the lives of th1s group, intoxicated and ugly. Under Clay Whipple's eyes he danglee repeatedly scarf pin. has strong. inherited antipathy. Driven to pitch of senseless fury, the boy seiSes a heavy ivory paper cutter. and fells his tormentor to the ground.
 It is murder. pure and simple. as plain. prosatc men interpret those events, and 50 the Kentucky jury Acting States Attorney Hardmuth. who Is 3 rejected suitor for viola,a hand.
 Crosses the horizon Judge Prentice. of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was many years before a suitor for the hand of Clay's grand mother, and who knows of that dis tant ladys aversion to catseyes, and learn that this aversion has been transmitted from mother to daughter and from daughter to son.
 Upon constitutional point a new, trial Ia granted, the judge testifies to the hereditary aversion and the jury frees Clay.
 Hardmuth, the violent and vangeful prosecutor. is kept from slaying Brookfield by the latter's force. of will, being neither able to hold nor shoot the pistol, and Hardmuth then is truthfully accused of having laid the plot for the slaying of that Kentucky governor who was slain some years since.
 Thus the main features. of a plot. which is worked out while the audi ence remains thrilled and in breath less suspense, The ending is most happy. Brookfield cuts out his gamb- ling house, and marrie0 the woman of his choice. Clay no less is united to the young woman who has been faithful to him in his hour of peril. Hardmuth Is assisted to escape by the efforts of Brookneld.
 'I had a dream of how that govcr- nor might be killed" says Brookfeld. The manner of his killing was as I dreamed it. Did Hardmuth receive from my mind, the impetus that led him to his rash conspiracy?''
 Here follows the moral of the play, upon the importance of right think ing; 1t being strictly and religiously true, however bizarre the manner in which the goal was reached, that thought has 8 mighty influence in shaping action.
 As men think 90 are they.
 So complex and unusual a plot. so aIlhtlv work ed 0alf ran1Yiraa for {fa jy,. terpretatiop the very ablest minds and here last night showed nothing of disappointment
 George Arvine gave a serious sym pathetic and forceful Interpretation of the rule of Brookheld and Miss Hall showed her capacity for strong work as Mrs. Whipple. a part which gave capacities.
 c. Wilson Hummel, as Judge Prem tice, presented a delicate and difficult role with refinement. and certainty, and made a stage figure upon which the mind rested with pleasant con sciousness of ease.
 And much in praise might be just ly said of the remainder of the cast, did space permit, who are George By as Jo; James Devine, the clever com- edian, as Lew Ellinger; Clarence Chase, as Tom Denning; Gordon De Maine, as Harvey, the butler: Miss Star, a most personable woman. as Mrs. Campbell; dainty Miss Genevieve as Miss Viola Campbell: William Mac cauley as Hardmuth the prosecutor;. Gus Tapley, as Judge Henderson; Frank Newcombe as butler to Justice Prentice: James J. Brennan, as Col. Bayley, and H. e. Melrose as MT. Emmett,