ery
household, and every child becomes a wretched little Roscius. Verily I
say unto you, the fewer actors the more acting; the fewer theatres the
more stages, and the worse. Lay it to heart, study it deeply, you who
believe that the stage is an open door to hell, for the chances are
ninety and nine to one that if this be true _you_ will end by consciously
or unconsciously keeping a private little gate thereunto. Beloved, put
this in thy pipe and fumigate it, that acting in some form is a human
instinct which cannot be extinguished, which never has been and never
will be; and this being so, is it not better, with Dr. Bellows, to try to
put it into proper form than to crush it? Truly it has been proved that
with this, as with a certain other unquenchable penchant of humanity,
when you suppress a score of professionals you create a thousand zealous
amateurs. There was never in this world a stage on which mere acting was
more skillfully carried out than in all England under Cromwell, or in
Philadelphia under the Quakers. Eccentric dresses, artificial forms of
language, separate and "peculiar" expressions of character unlike those
of "the world," were all only giving a form to that craving for being odd
and queer which forms the soul of masking and acting. Of course people
who act all the time object to the stage. _Le diable ne veut pas de
miroir_.

The gypsy of society not always, but yet frequently, retains a keen
interest in his wild ancestry. He keeps up the language; it is a
delightful secret; he loves now and then to take a look at "the old
thing." Closely allied to the converted sinners are the _aficionados_,
or the ladies and gentlemen born with unconquerable Bohemian tastes,
which may be accounted for by their having been themselves gypsies in
preexistent lives. No one can explain how or why it is that the
_aficion_ comes upon them. It is _in_ them. I know a very learned man
in England, a gentleman of high position, one whose name is familiar to
my readers. He could never explain or understand why from early
childhood he had felt himself drawn towards the wanderers. When he was
only ten years old he saved up all his little store of pence wherewith to
pay a tinker to give him lessons in Romany, in which tongue he is now a
Past Grand. I know ladies in England and in America, both of the blood
and otherwise, who would give up a ball of the highest flight in society,
to sit an hour in a gypsy tent, and o