hat the spectators could see the curving flight of the bomb and
its final explosion above the doomed fort. This scenic marvel had cost
time and money to devise; but it was never visible after the first
performance, because it drew attention to itself, as a mechanical
effect, and so took off the minds of the audience from the Northern
lover and the Southern girl, the Southern lover and the Northern girl,
whose loves were suddenly sundered by the bursting of that fatal shell.

At the second performance, the spectators did not see the shot, they
only heard the dread report; and they were free to let their sympathy go
forth to the young couples. Here, once more, as so often in the art of
the stage, suggestion was far more potent than any attempt to exhibit
the visible object. The truth of this axiom was shown in the third act
of the same play, during its earlier performances, when the playwright
with the aid of a scant dozen soldiers was able to suggest all the
turmoil and all the hazards of a battle only a little removed. At later
performances, the author allowed the attempt to be made actually to
represent certain phases of a retreat, with horse, foot and artillery on
the stage all at once; and altho the stage-management was excellent in
every way, perhaps the total effect was less than when the far larger
possibilities of a great battle had been merely suggested to the
spectators, their own imaginations evoking the possibilities of war more
completely than any stage-manager could set it before them.

So in the 'Tosca' of M. Sardou, the torture of the hero, if we were to
see it, might be received with incredulity, but we are far more likely
to accept it as real when we perceive it only thru the sufferings of the
heroine at the sight of it. So again, in the 'Darling of the Gods,' the
destruction of the little band of loyal Samurai is far more effectively
conveyed to us by the faint voices which call and answer once and again
in the Red Bamboo Forest, than it would be by any actual presentation of
combat and carnage. So, in 'L'Aiglon,' the specters on the battle-field
of Wagram are much more impressive, if they are merely imagined by the
poor little prince, and if there is no vain attempt to realize them
concretely. So, in 'Macbeth,' there is a loss of interest if the ghost
of _Banquo_ struts in upon the banquet. Our modern incredulity doubts
the existence of returning spirits, altho it is willing enough to accept
the reali