r they were not daily life, they were ages long
ago and far away, they belonged to the Never-Never-Land of romantic
fable--of dreams and the heart's desire. There is no such thing as a
complete realist at twenty. Or, if there is, he should be interned as
an enemy alien.

A generation has passed since the Nineties, and there are no stage
sundials any more. Perhaps that is but another way of saying that I am
middle-aged, but, upon my word, I do not think so. Do you remember the
sundial over which Dolly and Mr. Carter philandered, the one which
bore the motto--

Horas non numero nisi serenas?

I reread that dialogue the other day, and captured some of the ancient
thrill. No, the real trouble is that a generation of realism, or what
has passed for realism on our American stage, has done its deadly
work. It has killed romance. That is not at all what realism was
intended to do. Indeed, to the larger view, romance is a part of the
reality of life. Realism was a reaction against sham and falsity and
sentimentalism, and, above all, perhaps, triviality of theme. But the
net result, so far as the American drama is concerned, seems to have
been the substitution of a realistic setting and dialogue for a false
one, and then a continuance of the old sham, sentimentalism,
triviality. How else can we account for the success of Mr. Belasco?
But the taste engendered by the realistic settings and dialogue has
banished the cloak and sword and sundial, stripped romance of its
charm and allure; and once stripped of these, it ceases to be romance,
for it ceases to reach the heart through the sense of beauty and of
mystery. We have succeeded in substituting a chocolate caramel for the
apples of Hesperides.

Yet it cannot be that this condition will be permanent. Comes a little
play like _The Gypsy Trail_, wherein even through the realistic
setting a strain of romance strikes, and all hearts respond. Youth
will not be denied, but, like Sentimental Tommy, will "find a way." It
may be that the old dualism of the Nineties was the sane solution, as
so many of the modern "art theatre" directors maintain, at least by
their practice, and the realistic drama should stick relentlessly to
its last, while romance flourishes untroubled by any fetters, in
free, fantastic, perhaps poetic, form. I do not know. I only know that
the sundial must come back to the stage, not, it may be, as the garden
ornament of old, but in some guise to further the dre