t seriously interest
him. These screens rested sociably against trees and lamp-posts as well
as against walls and fences, to all of which they were, I suppose,
familiarly attached; but the sweetest note of their confidence was that,
in parallel lines and the good old way, characters facing performers,
they gave the whole cast, which in the "palmy days" of the drama often
involved many names. I catch myself again in the fact of endless
stations in Fifth Avenue near the southwest corner of Ninth Street, as I
think it must have been, since the dull long "run" didn't exist then for
the young _badaud_ and the poster there was constantly and bravely
renewed. It engaged my attention, whenever I passed, as the canvas of a
great master in a great gallery holds that of the pious tourist, and
even though I can't at this day be sure of its special reference I was
with precocious passion "at home" among the theatres--thanks to our
parents' fond interest in them (as from this distance I see it flourish
for the time) and to the liberal law and happy view under which the
addiction was shared with us, they never caring much for things we
couldn't care for and generally holding that what was good to them would
be also good for their children. It had the effect certainly of
preparing for these, so far as we should incline to cherish it, a
strange little fund of theatrical reminiscence, a small hoard of
memories maintaining itself in my own case for a lifetime and causing
me to wonder to-day, before its abundance, on how many evenings of the
month, or perhaps even of the week, we were torn from the pursuits of
home.

IX

The truth is doubtless, however, much less in the wealth of my
experience than in the tenacity of my impression, the fact that I have
lost nothing of what I saw and that though I can't now quite divide the
total into separate occasions the various items surprisingly swarm for
me. I shall return to some of them, wishing at present only to make my
point of when and how the seeds were sown that afterwards so thickly
sprouted and flowered. I was greatly to love the drama, at its best, as
a "form"; whatever variations of faith or curiosity I was to know in
respect to the infirm and inadequate theatre. There was of course
anciently no question for us of the drama at its best; and indeed while
I lately by chance looked over a copious collection of theatrical
portraits, beginning with the earliest age of lithography and