"it was with the Henshaw words still
in my ears that I first came into the presence of Merton Gill, feeling
that he would-as he at once finely did--put me at my ease. Simple,
unaffected, modest, he is one whom success has not spoiled. Both on the
set where I presently found him--playing the part of a titled roue in
the new Buckeye comedy--to be called, one hears, 'Nearly Sweethearts or
Something'-and later in the luxurious but homelike nest which the
young star has provided for his bride of a few months-she was 'Flips'
Montague, one recalls, daughter of a long line of theatrical folk dating
back to days of the merely spoken drama-he proved to be finely unspoiled
and surprisingly unlike the killingly droll mime of the Buckeye
constellation. Indeed one cannot but be struck at once by the deep vein
of seriousness underlying the comedian's surface drollery. His sense of
humour must be tremendous; and yet only in the briefest flashes of his
whimsical manner can one divine it.

"'Let us talk only of my work,' he begged me. 'Only that can interest my
public.' And so, very seriously, we talked of his work.

"'Have you ever thought of playing serious parts?' I asked, being now
wholly put at my ease by his friendly, unaffected ways.

"He debated a moment, his face rigidly set, inscrutable to my glance.
Then he relaxed into one of those whimsically appealing smiles that
somehow are acutely eloquent of pathos. 'Serious parts--with this
low-comedy face of mine!' he responded. And my query had been answered.
Yet he went on, 'No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give a good
imitation of a bad actor but, doubtless, I should give a very bad
imitation of a good one.

"Et vailet, Messieurs." I remarked to myself. The man with a few simple
strokes of the brush had limned me his portrait. And I was struck again
with that pathetic appeal in face and voice as he spoke so confidingly.
After all, is not pure pathos the hall-mark of great comedy? We laugh,
but more poignantly because our hearts are tugged at. And here was a
master of the note pathetic.

"Who that has roared over the Gill struggle with the dreadful spurs was
not even at the climax of his merriment sympathetically aware of his
earnest persistence, the pained sincerity of his repeated strivings,
the genuine anguish distorting his face as he senses the everlasting
futility of his efforts? Who that rocked with laughter at the fox-trot
lesson in Object, Alimony, could be impervio