t, American
theaters are not, either without or within, very attractive. The
auditoriums, to a European, have a somewhat dingy air. Which air is no
doubt partly due to the non-existence of a rule in favor of evening
dress (never again shall I gird against the rule in Europe!), but it is
due also to the oddly inefficient illumination during the entr'actes,
and to the unsatisfactory schemes of decoration.

The interior of a theater ought to be magnificent, suggesting pleasure,
luxury, and richness; it ought to create an illusion of rather riotous
grandeur. The rare architects who have understood this seem to have lost
their heads about it, with such wild and capricious results as the new
opera-house in Philadelphia. I could not restrain my surprise that the
inhabitants of the Quaker City had not arisen with pickaxes and razed
this architectural extravaganza to the ground. But Philadelphia is a
city startlingly unlike its European reputation. Throughout my too-brief
sojourn in it I did not cease to marvel at its liveliness. I heard more
picturesque and pyrotechnic wit at one luncheon in Philadelphia than at
any two repasts outside it. The spacious gaiety and lavishness of its
marts enchanted me. It must have a pretty weakness for the most costly
old books and manuscripts. I never was nearer breaking the Sixth
Commandment than in one of its homes, where the Countess of Pembroke's
own copy of Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_--a unique and utterly
un-Quakerish treasure--was laid trustfully in my hands by the regretted
and charming Harry Widener.

To return. The Metropolitan Opera-House in New York is a much more
satisfactory example of a theatrical interior. Indeed, it is very fine,
especially when strung from end to end of its first tier with pearls, as
I saw it. Impossible to find fault with its mundane splendor. And let me
urge that impeccable mundane splendor, despite facile arguments to the
contrary, is a very real and worthy achievement. It is regrettable, by
the way, that the entrances and foyers to these grandiose interiors
should be so paltry, slatternly, and inadequate. If the entrances to the
great financial establishments reminded me of opera-houses, the
entrances to opera-houses did not!

Artistically, of course, the spectacle of a grand-opera season in an
American city is just as humiliating as it is in the other Anglo-Saxon
country. It was disconcerting to see Latin or German opera given
exactly--with no differ