Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

| may get in q brief inspection at an OPP
| perfume moment without being COM
pletely withered. One always may drop
program.
The printed program is a great help
when the show is slow. There is an art
to handling programs not always under
stood. Like cigarette, it gives the
hand something to do, and when the
hand is in motion the human spirit is
satisfied. That is how hand-minded we
/ are, as a race.
When the hands and the eyes are
united in action, as in looking over the
theatrical program, the audience is sat-
isfied: no doubt that is why aStute
managers since the old days have pro-
vided programs, no matter how thin in
bulk or sketchy in material.
They give the individual members of
the group present something to do
when the action is slow, the play tire
bic to thumb over the program and
read the jokes and see what play is
coming next week. The advertisements,
too, are interesting, no matter how old
or we'll known.
Not the least interesting thing in a
| theater is the preliminary hum of con-
versation before the play begins and
during the mterm1SS1onS.
There is no other noise exactly like
it in the world. 1t is cross between
| a Quick-Step and q waltz, a rumble and
violet.
At any given moment no word Is dis
| tinguishable, but he who listens feels
as If he were perpetually on the
threshold of discovery.
Out of the weird condemnation may
come q real word at almost any mo-
ment. He holds his ears eagerly to the
ground, as it were, to catch what this
gigantic noise Is trying to say. There
must be some meaning to the aggregate
| Surely all these dozens OF words, poured
forth one to one or one to two, until
the entire confined space is crammed
| with them, will eventuate at last into
one clearly recognizable, easily under
stood word which shall spell the soul
Of the gathering.
X \ X
So close together all these people sit
that an unsuspecting visitor from an
other sphere might think they were all
friends but 1t is only the closeness OF
railroad station.
1t means nothing. The party of four
which came in late has a man at one
end and a woman at the other as
buffers. These buffers pretend not to
know that the spectators next to them
exist. There was a cold, ordinarily well
bred 81 beg your pardon!" as the party
came in, but no one demanded the too
careful phraSing. and certainly no one
expected any attention to be paid to It,
| Here we Sit side by side, yet miles
apart, since none of us knows anything
about anybody else, or very little. Yon-
der is a well known member of Con-
gress. there q dramatic critic. Both
look bored.
Down that way stretches a group OF
men and women, solemnly bent on be-
ing entertained, backed by similar rows
as far as the eye can see into the dusk
Of the overhanging balconies.
| Overhead are still other rows, to the
perilous pitch of the once-called peanut
| galleries. BY way of helping pass the
dull evening enjoyably one may think
back over the old days, when the price
| to the galleries was the best one could
do. Well, he might have done worse
The best that he has learned since, In
the ways of the theater, Is to bring the
old indifference to ones fellows down
into the higher priced seats and to feel
at home there, even when the play Is
| dull