The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-12-25
MR. CYRIL SCOTT, POPULAR MATINEE IDOL
 CHATS ABOUT ACTOR FOLK AT CHRISTMAS
Fly DOLLY DALRY MPLE

1 Have wou ever thought about theatrical
 folk at Christmas tide? l In way, they are perhaps the most lonely and detached people in the world.
 Christmas for you and for me and for
 others who jog in comfortable, undis-
 turbed obscurity along life's road is l home time and heart time l For the actors or actress. it is work coal heaver. and she wishes that she
 were chambermaid or most anybody in the world but a mime.
 During this classic holiday the actor or actress is as heartsick and homesick as ] that child from the tenement district who l stares with wide open eyes into windows draped with holly and crowded with gifts and goodies. and whose little heart yearns for all the nice things that Santa Claus is going to bring the children of the rich.
 l How do l know all this? Because Mr Cyril Scott. the leading man" with ..The Seven Keys to Bald pate" which is the yuletide attraction at the Jefferson. told me so Christmas Eve when I went in to have a little chat with this clever, fascinating man, who perhaps ] more than any other on the stage today :, deserves and wears most gracefully the coveted title of matinee idol
 It was a quiet sort of a little affair-our talk.
 MT. Scott said
 How d'you do?"
 And then I said:
 How d'you do?p
 And then we both wished each other Merry Christmas.
 "This thing of being away from home at Christmas tide, MT. Scott began.
 Don't say anything about that, because I'll cry if you do. interrupted. q always feel so sorry for anybody who has to be away from home when Santa Claus is abroad in the land. He might not find where you are just exactly, and thus overlook your perfectly good stocking that's hanging by the shelf"
 T haven't spent many holidays away from home' said Mir Scott proudly, and there's one thing about our company that we all have to be thankful for, and that is most of us have our wives with us
 This was a pretty little way, l think, that Mir. Scott had of telling me that he was married, for he immediately told me of his charming wife. who was Miss Lcuise Kissing, a popular and talented singer, and when I grasped the situation asked him if she was still on the stage at which remark he puckered up his fore head and looking at me quizzically out of his big, brown eyes that are as brilliant as stars, said:
 "One person in the family on the stage is sufficient. Don't you think so.
 l said I did and then somehow we got back again to actor folk being away from home at Christmas.
 We've just got to have some sort of q Christmas you know, MT. Scott said, ''and so we are having dinner tonight for all the members of the company We are going to have turkey and cranberry sauce and plum pudding, and
 That doesn't sound much like an or phan to me. I suggested fippantly. |, why we're even planning Christmas tree said Mr Scott, land altogether I think we are going to have a fine old southern Christmas
 You're lucky to be having your Christ mas dinner on Christmas Eve" I suggest ed, because it would be awful to have to leave right in the midst of things on Christmas Day with a turkey leg in one hand and a piece of mnce pie in the other, and rush to play a matinee"
 MT. Scott looked at me in that ador- able way of his, and said
 Its no joking matter I assure you" said MT. Scott, playing two perform ances on Christmas Day when you want to be sitting beside a big fire with all your family and loved ones around you" I was just about to "boo-hoo" right out in the meeting when the conversation sud- denly veered round and I pleaded Do say something funny, MT. Scott or I shall certainly weep. Tell me the funniest Christmas story you've ever heard"
 Never heard but one. and that is too old to tell he replied, and began to tel me of the Christmases he had spent "on the road when he was playing ''The | Prince Chap (one of his biggest sue ! cesses by the way). and about the three | youngsters in the show who made merry | for them all at that time. "Really-as a matter of fact what came here to talk to you about is your self, interrupted presently. ''The usual things why. how, when, did you happen to go on the stage, and More of an accident than anything else, l might say,' he said quickly. "Recited at school commeDcement- | orated, and declaimed'' said obeying perfectly good "hunch.'' Never" MT. Scott denied. q can't see