catch
the murmur of love-laden words. Then it was that the stage sundial
flourished in all its glory, generally flooded, to be sure, with
moonlight--that peculiar moonlight of the American theatre which turns
grease-paint to a horrible magenta--and we youths, with the divine
flexibility of imagination only youth can know, responded alike to
_Hedda Gabler_ and _An Enemy to the King_.

Do you remember the sundial, exactly at stage centre, in the latter
play? In what dulcet tones, love-laden, the future Hamlet and Macbeth
murmured to his lady fair! Even the sword duel in the last act, all
over the chamber, across the great bed ripping down the curtains,
back and forth with flash of steel and rattle of blade, was not so
thrilling as that moonlit scene across the dial plate. My constant
companion in those days was a boy who to-day preaches each week from a
famous pulpit, with gravity and eloquence. He is a man of substantial
parts, on whom life's bitter realities press very hard as he battles
to relieve them. Does he now recall, I wonder, how for weeks after we
had hung from the gallery rail at _An Enemy to the King_ he even said
"Thank you," when somebody passed him a piece of bread, in the deep,
long-drawn tones of Sothern's romantic passion? He was a handsome
youth, and I know not what mischief he wrought that winter in gentle
bosoms, with his vocabulary enlarged and romanticized, his tones
colored with emotion, as he sought secluded corners at our dances and
practised his new art. Our Tolstoian moods were not for dances, you
may be sure! We lived in a dual universe. In one world were sundials
and moonlight and the thrill of a woman's eyes; there was slow music
and the ache of unfilled desire ever about to be gratified by some
hoped-for miracle. In the other world were only facts, hard facts, and
the scorn of considering them emotionally, of considering them in any
way but with the intellect. I fear in those days our moods did not
connect intellect and the fair sex. Perhaps youth never does. And
perhaps youth is right, not in thus passing judgment on women, for
that is not what is done, but in refusing to surrender any portion of
the divine romantic mystery of sex at two-and-twenty to the cold light
of reason. When Shaw and Ibsen wrote, they wrote of daily life, and we
were learning to accept their contention that it should be written
about truthfully. But there was no lie in these other plays, these
sundial romances, fo