Pieces Of Hate; And Other Enthusiasms Part 6

They were old, these two kings, and the other wise man was young. When they asked him he could not tell why he waited. He knew that his treasuries had been ransacked for rich gifts for the King of Kings. It seemed that there was nothing more which he could give, and yet he was not content.

He made no answer to the old men who shouted to him that the time had come. The camels were impatient and swayed and snarled. The shadows across the desert grew longer. And still the young king sat and thought deeply.

At length he smiled, and he ordered his servants to open the great treasure sack upon the back of the first of his camels. Then he went into a high chamber to which he had not been since he was a child. He rummaged about and presently came out and approached the caravan. In his hand he carried something which glinted in the sun.

The kings thought that he bore some new gift more rare and precious than any which they had been able to find in all their treasure rooms. They bent down to see, and even the camel drivers peered from the backs of the great beasts to find out what it was which gleamed in the sun. They were curious about this last gift for which all the caravan had waited.

And the young king took a toy from his hand and placed it upon the sand.

It was a dog of tin, painted white and speckled with black spots. Great patches of paint had worn away and left the metal clear, and that was why the toy shone in the sun as if it had been silver.

The youngest of the wise men turned a key in the side of the little black and white dog and then he stepped aside so that the kings and the camel drivers could see. The dog leaped high in the air and turned a somersault. He turned another and another and then fell over upon his side and lay there with a set and painted grin upon his face.

A child, the son of a camel driver, laughed and clapped his hands, but the kings were stern. They rebuked the youngest of the wise men and he paid no attention but called to his chief servant to make the first of all the camels kneel. Then he picked up the toy of tin and, opening the treasure sack, placed his last gift with his own hands in the mouth of the sack so that it rested safely upon the soft bags of incense.

"What folly has seized you?" cried the eldest of the wise men. "Is this a gift to bear to the King of Kings in the far country?"

And the young man answered and said: "For the King of Kings there are gifts of great richness, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

"But this," he said, "is for the child in Bethlehem!"

XV

THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT

The fun of most of the criticism of George Jean Nathan's lies in the fact that he has been an irreconcilable in the theater. Rules and theories have been disclaimed by him. Each play has been a problem to be considered separately without relation to anything else except, of course, the current dramatic activities in Vienna, Budapest and Moscow.

Most of his themes have been variations of the two important aspects of all criticism, "I like" and "I don't like." Masking his thrusts under a screen of indifference, he has generally afforded stirring comment by the sudden revelation of the fact that his enthusiasms and his hates are lively and personal. Being among the uncla.s.sified, the element of surprise has entered largely into his expression of opinion.

But of late it is evident that Mr. Nathan has grown a little lonely in functioning as a guerilla in the field of dramatic reviewing. He is envious of the cults and his scorn of Clayton Hamilton, George Pierce Baker and William Archer seems to have been nothing more than what the Freudians call a defensive mechanism. He too would ally himself with a school--to be called the George Jean Nathan School of Criticism.

His latest volume of collected essays, ent.i.tled "The Critic and the Drama," is designed as a prospectus for pupils. It undertakes to codify and describe in part the theater of to-day and to a.n.a.lyze and explain much more fully George Jean Nathan. He insists on our knowing how the trick is done. To us there is something disturbing in all this. We have always been among those who did not care to go behind the scenes at the playhouse for fear that we might be forced to learn how thunder is contrived and the manner of making lightning. Still more we have feared that somebody would impel us into a corner and point out the real David Belasco. We much prefer our own romantic impression gathered wholly from his curtain speeches at first nights.

It is painful, then, to have the new book insist upon our meeting the real Mr. Nathan. It was not our desire ever to know how his mind worked.

We much preferred to believe that the charming little pieces in the _Smart Set_ had no father and no mother except spontaneous combustion.

To find this antic author burdened with theories is almost as disillusioning as to hear of Pegasus winning the 2.20 trot or one of the muses contracting to give a culture course at the Woman's Study Club of New Roch.e.l.le.

And the worst of it is that the theories of Mr. Nathan, when exposed in detail, seem to be much like those of other men. Even those who have never had the privilege of attending a performance of Micklefluden's "Arbeit" at Das Hochhaus in Prague early in the spring of 1905 have much the same philosophy of the critic and the playhouse as Mr. Nathan. Thus we find him explaining that Shakespeare was "the greatest dramatist who ever lived, because he alone of all dramatists most accurately sensed the mongrel nature of his art." Mr. Nathan also insists sternly that criticism must be personal, and in discussing the relation between the printed and the acted drama he ingeniously makes a comparison with music.

"If drama is not meant for actors," he cries, "may we not also argue that music is not meant for instruments?" We see no reason on earth why Mr. Nathan should not argue in this manner, since so many hundreds in the past have raised the same point. It is also interesting to learn that Mr. Nathan thinks that the drama can never approximate nature. "It holds the mirror not up to nature but to the spectator's individual nature." He has also discovered that "great drama, like great men and women, is always just a little sad."

"The Critic and the Drama" is probably the most profound book which Mr.

Nathan has ever published and it is by far the dullest. His pages are alive with echoes even at such times as they are not directly evoked and called upon by name. One of the difficulties of profundity is overcrowding. A man may remain pretty much to himself as long as he chooses to keep his touch light and avoid research. Taking a suggestion from Mr. Nathan, it may be said that all great ma.s.ses of men are a little serious. In the plains and the rolling country there is room for an individual to skip and frolic, but all the peaks are pre-empted.

It may not be generally known that the young man who carried the banner with the strange device was lucky to die when he did. Had he eventually reached the summit which he sought he would have discovered to his great dismay that he merely const.i.tuted the 29th division in the annual outing of the Excelsior Marching and Chowder Club.

Criticism gives the lie to an ancient adage. In this field of endeavor "The higher the fewer" may be recognized as an exquisite piece of irony.

XVI

THE DOG STAR

_The Silent Call_ presents the most beautiful of all male stars now appearing in the films. In intelligence, also, his rank seems high. The picture is built around Strongheart, a magnificent police dog. There are, to be sure, minor two-legged persons in his support, but practically all the heavy emotional scenes are reserved for Strongheart.

The dog star has virtues which are all his own. Any man of such glorious physique could hardly fail to betray self-consciousness. His virility would obsess him to such an extent that there certainly would be moments of posturing and swagger. Strongheart is above all this. He never trades upon the fact of being a "he dog" or even emphasizes that he is red-blooded and 100 per cent police.

Unlike all the other handsome devils of the screen, he goes about his business without smirking. His smile is broad, unaffected and filled with teeth and tongue. And above all, Strongheart does not slick down his hair with water or with wax.

Fine mountain country has been selected for _The Silent Call_ and we see Strongheart galloping like a racing snow plow through white meadows which foam at his progress. He fights villains with great intensity and sincerity, devastates great herds of cattle and brings the picture to a fitting climax by leaping from a jutting cliff to drown a miscreant in a whirlpool. We have seen no photography as beautiful nor any picture so vivid and live in action.

The story itself is good enough, but somewhat less than masterly.

Repet.i.tion dulls the edge of rescue. The heroine, for instance, never should have been allowed to visit G.o.d's own country without a chaperon.

Her propensity for predicament seems unlimited. Let her be lost in a virgin forest, if only for a moment, and out of the nowhere some villain arises to buffet her with odious and violent attentions.

She keeps Strongheart as busy as if he had been a traffic police dog. He is forever engaged in indicating "Stop" and "Go" to the stream of miscreants who bear down upon Miss Betty Houston. Villainicular traffic in the Northwest woods seems to be in need of constant regulation.

Strongheart bit some bad men and barked at others. Both measures were effective, for this is an unusual dog in that his bark is just as bad as his bite. He never questioned the character or the intentions of the heroine. After all, he was only a dumb animal and his loyalty was tinged with no suspicions.

We must admit that the human frailty of doubt sometimes led us to carp a little at the rect.i.tude of Miss Houston. Her plights were so numerous that we were mean enough to wonder whether all were accidental. There was one particular villain, for instance, who attempted to abduct her no less than four times. We could not dismiss the thought that perhaps she had given him some encouragement. Indeed we would not have been surprised if at last there has come a caption quoting the heroine as saying: "Get along with you, dog, and mind your own business." This, however, did not prove to be within the scheme of the scenario writers.

In all justice to Miss Houston, it must be said that, though she owed Strongheart much, he was also in her debt. It took the love of a good woman to drag him back from degradation. He was a nice dog until his master left the ranch and went East to correct the proofs of a new book.

Strongheart could not understand that and neither could we. It seemed to us as if the publisher might have sent the galleys on by mail.

Deprived of the care of his owner, Strongheart began to revert to type.

He had been a wolf and he took to long hikes away from home. When he grew hungry he killed a cow. The cattle men put a price upon his head and Strongheart became an outcast.

His return to civilization was effected by the first attack upon Miss Houston. Even a wolf knows that it is only a coward who would strike a woman. The police instinct proved stronger than the call of the wild and the great beast bounded out of the thicket and seized Ash Brent by the trousers. This was the first of many meetings between Ash and Strongheart. The last and decisive encounter was in the whirlpool. The dog swam to the bank alone and sat upon the bank to howl the piercing death cry of the wolf.

There is a suggestion of a happy ending in _The Silent Call_ because Strongheart's original master falls in love with Miss Houston and marries her. It was probably the only union for the heroine which the dog would have sanctioned, and yet we cannot imagine that it left him entirely happy. Once the much beset young woman was given over into the care of a good man, Strongheart must have realized that his vocation was gone. Ash Brent was dead and all the other villains had been captured by the Sheriff. Placidity stared Strongheart in the face.

To be sure, he bit people only because they were bad, but, like most reformers, he had learned to love his work. It was to him more than a duty. We doubt whether he remained long with the honeymooners. It is our notion that on the first dark night he took to the wilds again. We can imagine him stalking a contented cow in the moonlight. The poor beast lowers her head for gra.s.s and Strongheart, seeking to convince himself that the horns have been employed in an overt act, mutters: "You would, would you!" Then comes the leap and the crashing of the great wolf jaws.

It is the invariable tragedy of the reformer that, though his work has been accomplished, he cannot retire. First come the giants and then the windmills.

XVII

ALTRUISTIC POKER

Although Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x's autobiography is a human doc.u.ment throughout, nothing in it has interested us quite so much as her description of her husband's poker system in the chapter called "The Compelling Lover."