-it fatigues one to keep in sight of
them. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men are
capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild."

"And you find they have no time to be agreeable?"

"Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in,
nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorb
everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as
one of them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a most
interesting city."

The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had
been to see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and
character, constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the
stage.

"I don't suppose," Mr. Morgan said, "a foreigner would understand it; it
would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London."

"Yes, I saw it," said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. "It was very odd, and
seemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiar
with American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while I
sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play--almost a
part of it, one might say--I doubted if I understood your people as well
as I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is the
beginning of an American drama."

"Some people say that it is."

"But it is so local!"

"Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with.
The only question is, is it true to human nature? What puzzled me in
this American play was its raising the old question of nature and art.
You've seen Coquelin? Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet,
the perfection of training, skill in an art. You never doubt that he is
performing in a play for the entertainment of an audience. You have the
same enjoyment of it that you have of a picture--a picture, I mean,
full of character and sentiment, not a photograph. But I don't think of
Denman Thompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school,
but as a New Hampshire farmer. I don't admire his skill; I admire him.
There is plenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play,
plenty of imitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is
the natural man. If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me."
"Probably to an American audience only he does not," Mr. Lyon remarked.

"Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience."

"I doubt if you will