at humor was so simple, so like
the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all
laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the
second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very
acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had
never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was
convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man
who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of
all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as
the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller
calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the
parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of
the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the
grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another.
Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one
should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black
Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace,
and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its
rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to
public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground,
while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and
"went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.

The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of
Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists,
and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular
old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt
with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in
which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of
traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be
always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of
_Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain
King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in
America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill
monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then
came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and
ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes
of modern times, that bids fa