was for!"--to the no small detriment of the situation. Here the fault
lay in the obtrusiveness of the preparation. Had the barometer passed
practically unnoticed among the other details of a well-furnished hall,
it would at any rate have been innocent, and perhaps helpful. As it was,
it seemed to challenge the curiosity of the audience, saying, "I am
evidently here with some intention; guess, now, what the intention can
be!" The producer had failed in the art which conceals art.

Another little trait from a play of those far-past days illustrates the
same point. It was a drawing-room drama of the Scribe school. Near the
beginning of an act, some one spilt a bottle of red ink, and mopped it
up with his (or her) handkerchief, leaving the handkerchief on the
escritoire. The act proceeded from scene to scene, and the handkerchief
remained unnoticed; but every one in the audience who knew the rules of
the game, kept his eye on the escritoire, and was certain that that ink
had not been spilt for nothing. In due course a situation of great
intensity was reached, wherein the villain produced a pistol and fired
at the heroine, who fainted. As a matter of fact he had missed her; but
her quick-witted friend seized the gory handkerchief, and, waving it in
the air, persuaded the villain that the shot had taken deadly effect,
and that he must flee for his life. Even in those days, such an
unblushing piece of trickery was found more comic than impressive. It
was a case of preparation "giving itself away."

A somewhat later play, _The Mummy and the Humming Bird_, by Mr. Isaac
Henderson, contains a good example of over-elaborate preparation. The
Earl of Lumley, lost in his chemical studies with a more than Newtonian
absorption, suffers his young wife to form a sentimental friendship with
a scoundrel of an Italian novelist, Signor D'Orelli. Remaining at home
one evening, when Lady Lumley and a party of friends, including
D'Orelli, have gone off to dine at a restaurant, the Earl chances to
look out of the window, and observes an organ-grinder making doleful
music in the snow. His heart is touched, and he invites the music-monger
to join him in his study and share his informal dinner. The conversation
between them is carried on by means of signs, for the organ-grinder
knows no English, and the Earl is painfully and improbably ignorant of
Italian. He does not even know that Roma means Rome, and Londra, London.
This ignorance, however, is pa