nd by the time _Jinny_ was ready to get married, the
audience seemed just as ready to die of fatigue.

The humor was supplied by the village dressmaker, who owned a
mustache, and who clamored for a depilatory! This pleasing, refined
and frolicsome bit of originality failed to awaken people from their
torpor. There was a good deal of talk about pigs and horses, while
tea, cucumbers and marmalade graced the dialogue incessantly; but the
amazed audience could not indorse this rural festival. _Jinny_, amid
the pigs, horses, tea, cucumbers and marmalade, talked in Mr.
Zangwill's best style--a style replete with wordplay or pun--but her
setting killed her, and she was soon "done for."

Perhaps "Jinny the Carrier" was a joke. Who shall say? It is a bit
"fishy"--I forgot to say that a real, dead fish was among the debris
of this comedy--that two such bad plays as "Jinny the Carrier" and
"The Serio-Comic Governess" honored New York to the exclusion of
London. It is all very well to say that New York is so generous, so
appreciative, so alive to all the good points of clever writers--it is
all very well to say that, and sometimes it reads very well--but the
fact remains that these plays _had_ no good points. London would have
laughed at them in immediate derision. We need feel no pride in the
circumstance of their original production in New York. Instead, we
should feel perfectly justified in feeling extremely sorry for
ourselves. We might even say that both of these plays were foisted
upon us in a spirit of "Oh, anything's good enough for New York!"

I don't say, and I don't believe, that this was the reason we suffered
from this Zangwill rubbish. Our ill luck was due to the fact that
playwrights and plays, owing to the grinding theatrical dictatorship
that has absolutely pulverized the healthy God-given spirit of
competition, by which alone an Art can be kept alive, are few and far
between. The manager takes what he can get, and he can get precious
little, for the incentive is lacking. He is obliged to produce
something, because he has an appalling list of theaters to fill. It is
perfectly inconceivable that "Jinny the Carrier" should have been even
rehearsed. It is a sheer impossibility that anybody could have
anticipated success.

Miss Annie Russell, a sterling little artist, deserved all our
sympathy. It was sad to see her in these surroundings, battling
against the inevitable. Miss Russell can succeed with far less
mate