of sonorous stones varying in tone and
hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions, have a
haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else. China, I believe,
is the only country that has produced music from stones. It is
naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having a
vogue in London, and that they will soon be heard in New York. It will
take some little time for Westerners to learn to listen intelligently
to our melodies which, being always in unison, in one key and in one
movement, are apt at first to sound as wearisome and monotonous as
Madame Patti's complicated notes did to me, but when they understand
them they will have found a new delight in life.

Although we Chinese do not divide our plays into comedies and tragedies
there is frequently a good deal of humor on the Chinese stage; yet we
have nothing in China corresponding to the popular musical comedy of
the West. A musical comedy is really a series of vaudeville
performances strung together by the feeblest of plots. The essence
seems to be catchy songs, pretty dances, and comic dialogue. The plot
is apparently immaterial, its only excuse for existence being to give a
certain order of sequence to the aforesaid songs, dances, and
dialogues. That, indeed, is the only object for the playwright's
introducing any plot at all, hence he does not much care whether it is
logical or even within the bounds of probability. The play-goers, I
think, care even less. They go to hear the songs, see the dances,
laugh at the dialogues, and indulge in frivolous frivolities; what do
they want with a plot, much less a moral? Chinese vaudeville takes the
form of clever tumbling tricks which I think are much preferable to the
sensuous, curious, and self-revealing dances one sees in the West.

Although musical comedy, or, more properly speaking, musical farce, is
becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America it is also
becoming proportionately more farcical; although in many theaters it is
staged as often as the more serious drama, in some having exclusive
dominion; and although theater managers find that these plays draw
bigger crowds and fill their houses better than any other, in the large
cities running for over a year, I cannot help regarding this feature of
theatrical life as so much theatrical chaos. It lacks culture, and is
sometimes both bizarre and neurotic. I do not object to patter, smart
give and take, in