n. Let such of
us as are at peace get together, and tell the tales of our happy
childhood to one another.

This chapter is ended. You will of course expect to be exhorted to visit
some photoplay emporium. But you need not look for fairy-tales. They are
much harder to find than they should be. But you can observe even in the
advertisements and cartoons the technical elements of the story of the
old lady and the pig. And you can note several other things that show how
much more quickly than on the stage the borderline of All Saints' Day and
Hallowe'en can be crossed. Note how easily memories are called up, and
appear in the midst of the room. In any plays whatever, you will find
these apparitions and recollections. The dullest hero is given glorious
visualizing power. Note the "fadeaway" at the beginning and the end of
the reel, whereby all things emerge from the twilight and sink back into
the twilight at last. These are some of the indestructible least common
denominators of folk stories old and new. When skilfully used, they can
all exercise a power over the audience, such as the crystal has over the
crystal-gazer.

But this discussion will be resumed, on another plane, in the tenth
chapter: "Furniture, Trappings, and Inventions in Motion."

CHAPTER V

THE PICTURE OF CROWD SPLENDOR

Henceforth the reader will use his discretion as to when he will read the
chapter and when he will go to the picture show to verify it.

The shoddiest silent drama may contain noble views of the sea. This part
is almost sure to be good. It is a fundamental resource.

A special development of this aptitude in the hands of an expert gives
the sea of humanity, not metaphorically but literally: the whirling of
dancers in ballrooms, handkerchief-waving masses of people in balconies,
hat-waving political ratification meetings, ragged glowering strikers,
and gossiping, dickering people in the marketplace. Only Griffith and his
close disciples can do these as well as almost any manager can reproduce
the ocean. Yet the sea of humanity is dramatically blood-brother to the
Pacific, Atlantic, or Mediterranean. It takes this new invention, the
kinetoscope, to bring us these panoramic drama-elements. By the law of
compensation, while the motion picture is shallow in showing private
passion, it is powerful in conveying the passions of masses of men.
Bernard Shaw, in a recent number of the Metropolitan, answered several
questions in regard