loom of the barn-like theatre.

"I don't know how it is done in Ober-Ammergau, but this Tyrolese thing
was a strange jumble of art and _naivete_, of talent and stupidity.
There was a full-fledged stage and footlights, and the scenery, some
one said, was painted by a man from Munich. But the players were badly
made up; the costumes, if correct, were ill-fitting; the stage was
badly lighted, and the flats didn't 'jine.' Some of the actors had
gleams of artistic perception. St. Mark was beautiful to look on,
Caiaphas had a sense of elocution, the Virgin was tender and sweet,
and Judas rose powerfully to his great twenty minutes' soliloquy. But
the bulk of the players, though all were earnest and fervent, were
clumsy or self-conscious. The crowds were stiff and awkward, painfully
symmetrical, like school children at drill. A chorus of ten or twelve
ushered in each episode with song, and a man further explained it in
bald narrative. The acts of the play proper were interrupted by
_tableaux vivants_ of Old Testament scenes, from Adam and Eve onwards.
There was much, you see, that was puerile, even ridiculous; and every
now and then some one would open the door of the dusky auditorium, and
a shaft of sunshine would fly in from the outside world to remind me
further how unreal was all this gloomy make-believe. Nay, during the
_entr'acte_ I went out, like everybody else, and lunched off sausages
and beer.

"And yet, beneath all this critical consciousness, beneath even the
artistic consciousness that could not resist jotting down a face or a
scene in my sketch-book, something curious was happening in the
depths of my being. The play exercised from the very first a strange
magnetic effect on me; despite all the primitive humors of the
players, the simple, sublime tragedy that disengaged itself from their
uncouth but earnest goings-on, began to move and even oppress my soul.
Christ had been to me merely a theme for artists; my studies and
travels had familiarized me with every possible conception of the Man
of Sorrows. I had seen myriads of Madonnas nursing Him, miles of
Magdalens bewailing Him. Yet the sorrows I had never felt. Perhaps it
was my Jewish training, perhaps it was that none of the Christians I
lived with had ever believed in Him. At any rate, here for the first
time the Christ story came home to me as a real, living
fact--something that had actually happened. I saw this simple son of
the people--made more simple by