ceeded
not only with her friends, but with the great unknown. She proved
herself to be an actress of exceeding vitality and force, and she made
not only a popular but an artistic hit.

Of course she was bound to do it sooner or later. We may not have
indorsed her previous productions, but we always liked Miss Fischer,
with her bouncing good nature, her intelligent outlook, her curious
untrammeled demeanor, always suggestive of a huge schoolgirl suddenly
let loose; her capital elocution and her agreeable way of insistently
seeming at home. In "The School for Husbands," these qualities
appeared quite relevantly. This strange season, now over, which has
snuffed out so many poor, feeble little stars, has been very kind to
Miss Fischer. She "came into her own."

Mr. Stange's play was an amusing comedy, dealing with domestic
infelicity--of the tit-for-tat order--in the "old" style. That is to
say, it did not flaunt in our faces a fracture of the seventh
commandment, or drag in a series of epigrams modeled upon those of the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld and Oscar Wilde. Mr. Stange went in for what
we call the "artificial," but it all occurred in 1720. The eighteenth
century covers a multitude of sins that are naked and unashamed in the
twentieth. We were disarmed in our frenzied analysis when we were
confronted with such purely imaginary and entertaining types as _Sir
John_ and _Lady Belinda Manners_, _Lady Airish_, _Lady Speakill_,
_Lady Tattle_, _Lord Foppington_ and _Lord Drinkwell_.

We were back again amid the "old comedy" characters, of whom we always
talk with sycophantic admiration. Sometimes we loathe them, but we
never say so. There has been a sporadic revival of one or two of these
"old comedies" this season, accomplished with that "bargain-counter"
atrocity--a sop for vulgar minds--known mischievously as the
"all-star-cast." It has been amusing to watch the cold, dispiriting
and almost clammy reception accorded to these "classics," compared
with the cordiality extended to Miss Alice Fischer in her "imitation"
classic, "The School for Husbands." Yet, if a well-read, modern
playwright cannot improve upon the eighteenth century, with his
sublime knowledge of all that has occurred since--then he must indeed
be rather small potatoes.

Mr. Stange made these improvements. While the revived work of the late
Oliver Goldsmith and Dion Boucicault languished, the "old comedy" of
the twentieth century triumphed. If you saw it, y