permit of concentrated interest, attention, or
pleasure. One goes away with many little bits. It is because the
background is made up of restless nervous dots, all anxious to get the
combined quota which they have paid for, when in reality they do not
even get any one thing. It is the alert eye which can go over three
rings and two stages at once and enjoy the pattern of each of them. It
is a physical impossibility really.

I think we should be made aware in finer ways of the artists who open
and close our bills. Why must the headliner always be a talking or a
singing person who tells you how much money he needs, or how much she
is getting? There is more than one type of artistic personality for
those who care for vaudeville. Why doesn't a team like the Rath
Brothers, for example, find itself the feature attraction? Must there
always be the string of unnecessary little men and women who have such
a time trying to fill up their twenty-two minutes or their fourteen?
Why listen forever to puppy-like song writers when one can hear and
watch a great artist like Ella Shields? My third visit to Ella Shields
convinces me that she is one of the finest artists I have ever heard,
certainly as fine in her way as Guilbert and Chevalier were. It is a
rare privilege to be able to enjoy artists like Grock--Mark
Sheridan--who is now dead, I am told. Mark, with his "They all walk
the wibbly-wobbly walk, they all wear the wibbly-wobbly ties," and so
on. Mark is certainly being missed by a great many who care for the
pleasure of the moment. When I look at and listen to the aristocratic
artist Ella Shields, I feel a quality in her of the impeccable Mrs.
Fiske. And then I am thinking of another great woman, Fay Templeton.
What a pity we must lose them either by death or by decisions in life.
Ella Shields with her charming typification of "Burlington Bertie from
Bow."

The other evening as I listened to Irene Franklin, I heard for certain
what I had always thought were notes from the magic voice of dear old
Fay. Unforgettable Fay. How can one ever say enough about her? I think
of Fay along with my single glimpses of Duse, Ada Rehan, Coquelin. You
see how I love her, then. Irene Franklin has the quality of imitation
of the great Fay without, I think, the real magic. Nevertheless I
enjoy her, and I am certain she has never been finer than now. She has
enriched herself greatly by her experiences the last two years, and
seems at the height of h