The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-20
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

The woman of the hour In Birming- ham is Mrs. Leonard T. Beecher l am heartily ashamed to confess that antil Monday night I had never heard her in any of her readings. I might just as well make the further confession that l have not the pleasure of knowing her personally, so I will simply write the impressions she made on me, total stranger.
 To begin with, she has a gracious presence and much personal magnetism, without which no one can ever hope to sway an audience. By her sympathetic personality she at once gets in touch with her hearers. She has the rare gift of being thrilled herself and finds no trouble in making others feel with her. The magnetic quality possessed by her in such remarkable degree is a gift of the gods, it cannot be acquired. When she opens her mouth to speak, the crowd hangs on her every word.
 I watched her closely. She never shouted, posed, or became hysterlcal but with masterful repose as she rem dered Begbie's poem, They Shall Not Pass" she won one after another until before the second verse she had the crowd completely In her hands to mold at will. It was pure genius, to take 8 dinner party, and. lift it out of its formal setting and change 1t into band of men and women eager to serve. She cannot be tagged, classified, or card indexed, her charm Is too elusive for any such systema tization. She can rest in the proud distinction that as a dramatic reader she is firmly entrenched in the hearts of Birmingham's picked men and women as the equal if not the superior of any one yet heard here.
 know nothing of her past studies or how she prepared herself, or if she nas ever attempted impersonations, but, l do know that she has dramatic talent of very high order, where intellect
 I'll never forget her manner as she stood there in the balcony, lone woman with the flags about her, almost in the dark, with the bright lights beneath and the hushed expectancy of the waiting crowd She began low but clear, but in little while she surprised me with the robustness and power of the cathedral organ quality of her voice. It was this that held me and the throng. It was the tone of worship that rang out on the assembly that made men and women forget the ballroom while she transported them into the sacredness of the atmos- phere of a church.
 I'll never forget her look as she stood there so frail that she seemed all eyes and soul, until she compelled me and others to forget everything, but that the hour was calling for sacrifice, and our little affairs, our business seemed to shrivel beneath her gaze, and we were ready to do and to die, as we listened, transfigured to the glorified message which fell from her lips and burnt into our innermost being and changed us into willing servants. Go back in your
  present to recall in all your past, any thing finer, more spiritual, more pro- phetic than her words, ''They Shall Not Pass" delivered in the rich, deep, melo- dious tones of her into whose being the spirit of France seemed to have at last been incarnated.
 fTn I-o drap the table a captain in the French army, hero of Verdun, bright, charming, daring, but as she went on I watched him and there faded out of his face the look of the intrepid soldier and he took on a look of reverential wonder, as one Who had at last seen through the red blood curtain of war behind which stood the Prince of Peace, and a smile played around his mouth as he thought of the time when once more he could sit quietly in his own beloved France, for he had done his part and the Hun had been held back and had not been allowed to pass.
 And when she finished he arose and gave her a bow as courtly as ever knight of old bestowed on his lady love. It made the play complete. and yet it was more than play, it was a bit of life that made every one who witnessed it feel a lump in his throat.
 If I was lifted out of myself on Mon day night by the wonderful way in which she took modern war poem and made it live and breathe and personify La Belle France, fresh from the wondrous spell of it, yet on Tuesday at the lunch con l was wholly unprepared to hear her in the broad glare of day without any softening lights or stage setting, save the red roses at her side, the wft of the gallant French captain De Cernowtz, presented on his behalf in the name of France by Dr. Barnwell not only re- peat her triumph of the night before, but rass out of a mere interpreter of others thoughts, and deliver a talk as a prelude to her readings which was a masterpiece.
 I came to the lunch tired from heavy mornings work. My mind was on business. I was out of tune with the occasion. I seemed to have spent myself was to be on the programme, and when she was called out, I confess that 1 rather resented it, for I wanted to keep her in mind as I had seen her the night n hnr nh p1,a ,tn