than the lyrics that librettists forge
for us today.

Wall Street broker, poet, green grocer, soldier, banker, lawyer,
whatever you are, confess the facts to yourself: you were once as I.
You have suffered the same feelings that I suffered. Perhaps with you
it was not Della Fox.... Who then? Did saucy Marie Jansen awaken your
admiration? Was pert Lulu Glaser the object of your secret but
persistent attention? How many times did you go to see Marie Tempest
in _The Fencing Master_, or Alice Nielsen in _The Serenade_? Was
Virginia Earle in _The Circus Girl_ the idol of your youth or was it
Mabel Barrison in _The Babes in Toyland_? Theresa Vaughn in _1492_,
May Yohe in _The Lady Slavey_, Hilda Hollins in _The Magic Kiss_, or
Nancy McIntosh in _His Excellency_? Madge Lessing in _Jack and the
Beanstalk_, Edna May in _The Belle of New York_, Phyllis Rankin in
_The Rounders_, or Gertrude Quinlan in _King Dodo_?

What do you whistle in your bathtub when you are in a reminiscent
mood? Is it _The Typical Tune of Zanzibar_, or _Baby, Baby, Dance My
Darling Baby_, or _Starlight, Starbright_, or _Tell Me, Pretty
Maiden_, or _A Simple Little String_, or _J'aime les Militaires_ (if
you whistle this, ten to one your next door neighbour thinks you have
been to an orchestra concert and heard Beethoven's _Seventh
Symphony_), or _Sister Mary Jane's Top Note_, or _A Wandering
Minstrel I_, or _See How It Sparkles_, or the _Lullaby_ from
_Erminie_, which Pauline Hall used to sing as if she herself were
asleep, and which Emma Abbott interpolated in _The Mikado_, or _A
Pretty Girl, A Summer Night_, or the _Policeman's Chorus_ from _The
Pirates of Penzance_, or _The Soldiers in the Park_, or _My Angeline_,
or the _Letter Song_ from _The Chocolate Soldier_, or _I'm Little
Buttercup_, or the _Gobble Song_ from _The Mascot_, or the _Anna Song_
from _Nanon_, or the march from _Fatinitza_, or _I'm All the Way from
Gay Paree_, or _Love Comes Like a Summer Sigh_, or _In the North Sea
Lived a Whale_, or _Jusqu'la_, or _The Harmless Little Girlie With the
Downcast Eyes_, or _They All Follow Me_, or _The Amorous Goldfish_, or
_Don't Be Cross_, or _Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart_, or
_Good-bye Flo_, or _La Legende de la Mere Angot_, or _My Alamo Love_?

There is a very subtle and fragrant charm about these old
recollections which the sight or sound of a score, a view of an old
photograph of Lillian Russell or Judic, or a dip in the _Theatre
Com