Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-25
By
Gardner
Hunting.

one OI TIE PACK JIldb HlleQ the alSles
downstairs and up, damned the oper
space where standing room was legally
sold and where it was not, crowded
every inch of the boxes. Men actually
sat on the ratings of the balconies al
seeming imminent risk of damage tc
themselves and others.
Miss Brainard was indignant, and
suggested that they might leave the
place unless given their proper seats
But they could not have left If they had
wished. And Phyllis reflected that in
case of fire few would escape unscathed
But she was Immediately impressed
with the fact that If she had come to
see the crowd so apparently had others
about her. She heard murmured COM
mentS by men and women whose bodies
were as thoroughly trapped as hers in
the grip of all the rest. They we're all
remarking on how others were taking
the new marvel, what the effect on peo-
pie was or would be. Everybody was a
critic; every one was an observer. ac-
knowledging symptoms in himself of
the general epidemic of excitement
perhaps, but always looking about him
for a real victim of the disease. The
girl wondered who then was the great
public for whose reactions one must
look Where were the men and the
|
to be expected typically to work?
| But when she listened to the general
| hum of the big, dark throng, instead Of
to individual remarks at her ear, she
knew. She herself was in and of them.
| Her own reactions were an exponent.
The crowds emotions might be sampled
from her own little cup She was no
more separate from them than any of
the others. She had a sudden sense of
the oneness of humanity she had never
caught before, as If it were sense only
to be caught in time of emergency or
myStif1cation.
A man spoke to them from the stage.
He told them some of the things Phyllis
had never thought to inquire about
how air was compressed, cooled. hque-
fed by expansion into the Vicarions
bombs, where, by means of the new in
sulating material called veritin, it was
preserved in frozen state for long pc
RODS and how it could be handled read
lily in the bare hand because of this
same remarkable insulator.
Phyllis was sure some of his talk was
part of BraiEards clever scenery to dis
guiSe facts he did not care to have ap-
pear too plainly. But people listened,
many mouth hanging open, as if the
lecturers meaning ran out thereat as
rapidly as it was received at the ear.
But they seemed somehow to absorb
something in passing. They accepted
everything the speaker said as true.
This was the astounding thing about it.
A few scientific terms imposed the whole
fabric, incredible fact and picturesque
fable, upon them. And they did not
seem to doubt at all that they were
about to be admitted to the intimate
actualities of the past. They seemed to
think 1t was sort of museum.
When the lights went out and the
"show" began they were silent, rapt.
Now and then there would be whisper,
do you spose it's really her?" as the
great Bernhard stood before them in
her Paris dressing room and made up
with help of her maids, speaking now
and then audibly in French. which SO
out OF 100 OF the audience did not I'M
derstand. and doing nothing either to
justify the hints of the risque that had
been circulated or from which one of
the watching women could seize a
beauty hint. But she shed the fra
GRANGE OF a great personality compell-
ingly over them.
''They say she died in 1929" said a
woman at Phyllis shoulder. Its an
awful good representation, I should
TITS not an representation" whis-
pered man. This here oxygen that's
IN liquid air brings EN- back to life or
something. I don't get it,
mo, that amt it," explained a third
member of the party. They've found
out that everybody that's lived leaves
a sort OF radio message of himself be-
hind and they're just beginning to pick
'em up"
But talk was not widespread.
Hundreds OF people in that theater
probably believed either that they were
the victims of some clever mechanical
trickery or that they were witnessing
some form Of theatrical performance
Phyllis took refuge in their quality of
high resistance to belief which saved
ner from some of the power of reali-
cation threatened to WELD over her.
On the other hand, plenty of people
were there who, like herself, were put
to it to control the feelings stirred by
the living presence of the dead! 1t
was no leSs-one could grasp it! And
as see q followed scene in this exhi-
bition, the truth stabbed deeper and
deeper into the minds of ALL clever and
stupid alike. that here were miracles,
dealing with great forces as with toys,
and promising to overturn many solid
not out of mems hands.
But the great moment came when,
after the lecturer had announced that
1t would now be proved to them that
what they had looked at was really
life as it had been lived, and not mere
mechanical reproductions of it, they
suddenly found themselves looking at
themselves as they had that night
streamed into the theater. A con-
tinuous scene which occupied perhaps
20 minutes showed the people, who now
packed the seats, aisles and ratings,
their own arrival in groups, pairs and
singly at the front entrance of the
building, gave them back their words,
their EXPLANATIONS, their laughs, their
chance misteps, their jostlings, their
fumblings for tickets, little courtesies,
little resentments, protests at crowding
"a thousand details from the actual,
instantly remembered, thousand
sounds. colors, scents, the chill of the
night breeZe-in which the gaping spec
tators lived again not only the move
ments of a past hour but its emotions