t in this type of beauty to make
attractive settings for them, so that we may be able to enjoy them at
their best, which in the theater we have never quite been able to
do--designs that will in some way add luster to an already bright and
pleasing show of talents.

I can see, for instance, a young and attractive girl bareback rider on
a cantering white horse inscribing wondrous circles upon a stage
exquisitely in harmony with herself and her white or black horse as
the case might be; a rich cloth of gold backdrop carefully suffused
with rose. There could be nothing handsomer, for example, than young
and graceful trapezists swinging melodically in turquoise blue
doublets against a fine peacock background or it might be a rich pale
coral--all the artificial and spectacular ornament dispensed with. We
are expected to get an exceptional thrill when some dull person
appears before a worn velvet curtain to expatiate with inappropriate
gesture upon a theme of Chopin or of Beethoven, ideas and attitudes
that have nothing whatsoever to do with the musical intention; yet our
acrobat whose expression is certainly as attractive, if not much more
so generally, has always to perform amid fatigued settings of the
worst sort against red velvet of the most depraved shade possible. We
are tired of the elaborately costumed person whose charms are trivial
and insignificant, we are well tired also of the ordinary gentleman
dancer and of the songwriter, we are bored to extinction by the
perfectly dull type of playlet which features some well known
legitimate star for illegitimate reasons. Our plea is for the
re-creation of variety into something more conducive to light pleasure
for the eye, something more conducive to pleasing and stimulating
enjoyment. Perhaps the reinstatement of the acrobat, this revival of a
really worthy kind of expression, would effect the change, relieve the
monotony. The argument is not too trivial to present, since the
spectator is that one for whom the diversion is provided.

I hear cries all about from people who once were fond of theater and
music hall that there is an inconceivable dullness pervading the
stage; the habitual patron can no longer endure the offerings of the
present time with a degree of pleasure, much less with ease. It has
ceased to be what it once was, what its name implies. If the old
school inclined toward the rough too much, then certainly the new
inclines distressingly toward the refined--