s kid last night handed me laughs that were better
than a month's vacation for this old carcass of mine. You say he was
just an extra?"

"That's what I heard last night. Anyway, he's all you say he is as an
artist. Where do you suppose he got it? Do you suppose he's just the
casual genius that comes along from time to time? And why didn't he stay
'straight' instead of playing horse with the sacred traditions of
our art? That's what troubled me as I watched him. Even in that wild
business with the spurs he was the artist every second. He must have
tricked those falls but I couldn't catch him at it. Why should such a
man tie up with Baird?"

"Ask me something hard. I'd say this bird had been tried out in serious
stuff and couldn't make the grade. That's the way he struck me. Probably
he once thought he could play Hamlet--one of those boys. Didn't you get
the real pathos he'd turn on now and then? He actually had me kind of
teary a couple of times. But I could see he'd also make me laugh my head
off any time he showed in a straight piece.

"To begin with, look at that low-comedy face of his. And then--something
peculiar--even while he's imitating a bad actor you feel somehow that it
isn't all imitation. It's art, I grant you, but you feel he'd still be
a bad actor if he'd try to imitate a good one. Somehow he found out his
limits and decided to be what God meant him to be. Does that answer you?
It gives you acting-plus, and if that isn't the plus in this case I miss
my guess."

"I suppose you're right--something like that. And of course the real
pathos is there. It has to be. There never was a great comedian without
it, and this one is great. I admit that, and I admit all you say about
our audience. I suppose we can't ever sell to twenty million people
a day pictures that make any demand on the human intelligence. But
couldn't we sell something better to one million--or a few thousand?"

The Governor dropped his cigarette end into the dregs of his coffee. "We
might," he said, "if we were endowed. As it is, to make pictures we must
make money. To make money we must sell to the mob. And the mob reaches
full mental bloom at the age of fifteen. It won't buy pictures the
average child can't get."

"Of course the art is in its infancy," remarked Henshaw, discarding his
own cigarette.

"Ours is the Peter Pan of the arts," announced the Governor, as he rose.

"The Peter Pan of the arts--"

"Yes. I trust you recall the o