its successful run of two months at Daly's Theater, New York, with the same organization of seventy-five people, is the attraction at the Columbia Theater, San Francisco. The cast is a long one, including among its principals Raymond Hitchcock, the comedian who set all Broadway laughing over his interpreta

tion of "King Dodo"; Cheridah Simpson, the Junoesque prima donna; Flora Zabelle, the soubrette; Greta Risley, Margaret McKinney, Arthur Wooley, William Corliss and Arthur Deagon. "King Dodo" will be followed by the season's big production of "Florodora." Other early attractions for the Columbia

The success of the engagement of "The Strollers" at the Columbia Theater, San Francisco, was in no small measure due to Theodor Vogt, of San Francisco, the musical director. He was called upon suddenly to serve in that capacity and his baton brought harmony and delight.

Since Mascagni's arrival the old discussion concerning hero worship and creative power has waged in the critical reviews. The editor of the Musical Courier says on this theme, "Heroes and Critics": "After all, the cultured is the domineering influence always and everywhere, even in huge China. Those to whom the subject of a painting is of more importance than the drawing, the color scheme, the composition and the

technic, cannot understand its essence, hence those are not the people to whom the painter looks. The musically cultured people of this country want criticism and not what is given to them at the expense of art. The revolt of the critic is the first step, and the first step of that revolt is his isolation."

*

Ellen Beach Yaw, the California soprano with the wondrous vocal range, now in Paris, has been kept exceedingly busy lately singing into a phonograph, making records for the Shah of Persia. The Shah is an enterprising monarch who proposes to kill ennui in his lonely palace at Teheran by turning loose the mechanism of a few hundred phonographs, gramophones and similar entertainers. Modern invention makes it possible for far-away Persia to hear the soulful strains of Parisian opera and of London music halls.

"THE SEEDY MAN" COMING IN BOOK FORM

ARNOLD GENTHE, PHOTO

One of the best-known newspaper writers on this coast is Peter Robertson, the veteran dramatic critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Besides his criticism of new plays, always conservative, well-considered and founded on wide knowledge of plays and actors, Mr. Robertson for years has been in the habit of contributing to the Sunday edition of his paper a series of articles, discussing the stage, together with literature, art and other topics. These articles he has grouped under various heads, but in the latest series he has invented, as the mouthpiece of his own sayings, a unique character whom he calls "The Seedy

Man." It is this figure which serves as the title of a volume of these papers that is to be issued in handsome style this month by A. M. Robertson, the wellknown local bookseller and publisher. The book will have a very striking cover illustration by Gordon Ross, an old man's head in black and white. These papers have been recast and in this new form they will be found very attractive reading for leisure half hours. In fact, Mr. Robertson's articles are more nearly akin to the Paris feuilleton than anything which has been printed in this country. There are many traits in common between the literary Scotchman and the Gaul. In both there is the gift of style, much sentiment and the power of

enforcing truth in an agreeable way.

The Seedy Man is a Ulysses of the city pavements, who has seen much and who has the ideal philosopher's gift of moralizing without tedium. He is of uncertain age; he loves his comfortable chair at the club and his glass of toddy. Like Holmes' immortal "Autocrat at the Breakfast Table," he does most of the talking, but other characters are introduced to draw him out or to suggest new lines of thought. Among these are the Fellow in the Corner, the Practical Man, the Candid Man, the Cynic and the Sentimental Man. They really serve little more than to enliven the articles with dialogue, in the handling of which Mr. Robinson is very happy. The old man, when he has had several drinks, often indulges in sentiment which is so neatly expressed that it is never in danger of going over the line into sentimentality. Running over the heads of chapters one finds the following subjects discussed among many others: Poetry, About Women's Eyes, About Love, Some Human Weaknesses, About Outlaws and Operas, The Uselessness of Kings and About the Morbid Story. These titles will serve to give an idea of the topics which the Seedy Man discusses. The author's half-cynical humor, with clever hits at passing fads, has a Thackerayan quality that is very enjoyable.

Naturally in these sketches, covering a wide range of topics, Mr. Robertson deals much with the theater, for the playhouse is now the great means of popular recreation. Twenty years ago there was strong prejudice against the theater in many quarters and strictly orthodox people in various creeds barred the play as a source of evil. Today the number who fail to recognize the theater as one of the great means of popular education is so small as to be scarcely worthy of note. Responding to this vastly increased interest in the theater Mr. Robertson has made his Seedy Man discourse frequently on drama and music. What will be found in these sketches, often presented in mild exaggeration but none the less true, is an earnest protest against the school of dramatic art represented by Pinero in "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" and "The Gay Lord Quex," and that other school, no less repulsive in its mixture of pessi

mism and evil passions of which Ibsen is the leader. It would be a good service if the wise words of this veteran theatrical critic could be put in the hands of those whose tastes are forming and who have not yet reached that stage when their jaded palates require the stimulus of vice and double entendre on the stage. Of this rage for coarse novels and indecent plays, the Seedy Man says:

"I am not pessimistic. I think life has always something beautiful about it. Clouded over sometimes, yes, often; but hasn't the gray day a beauty of its own, and hasn't the storm a wild excitement? I don't know any more enjoyable feeling than to see the sun bursting through the cloud, the bit of blue sky through the breaking storm. For heaven's sake, let us keep away from the morbid study of eternal wickedness! We have been scared into a dread of living by morbid literature, by morbid plays, and the cynical sneer of baser and inferior intellects. I believe, gentlemen, this latter-day philosophy, this rank novel, this theater-libreism, comes from unhealthy brains. What do we want with false representations of abnormal conditions? All is not vice that seems to be, any more than all is virtue that seems to be. Everything is to us what we think; let us think the best of everything. Nobody was ever hurt by a little honest pleasure thrown into life; nobody ever was the worse for an honest laugh; and no time was ever wasted that put brighter ideas and pictures of the world into

our minds."

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#

The Seedy Gentleman got up and reached for his coat.

I

"We would all be better if we could. We mean well; we may be weak. But I have never been able to see why the misfortunes and vices of the world should be the staple of novels and plays. I am weary of the play of scoundrel, lover and the weak woman; I am weary of the drama of hate and revenge; am weary of waiting through four acts or four hundred pages for the righting of some absurd wrong, the exposure of villainy and the absolution of the innocent; I am weary of meaningless murder, and unaccountable vice; of the adventures of lunatics and criminals. And so, gentlemen, I would like to hail the drama of the future, stories of bright men and women of wit and character; life at its gayest, with music and flowers, beauty and manliness, preaching the gospel of the sunshine."

One of the best things in these sketches is a defense of America and Americans against the humorists and the caricaturists, who, to make a laugh, represent this country as given over to bribery and corruption and paint a public official as a fellow who is never so happy as when his hand is in the money bag of the federal or state government, whose salary

he is drawing. It is amusing in its broad, grotesque way, this caricature and this humor, but it coarsens the national mind, it hurts the national conscience and it kills genuine patriotism. On this the author has these wise words:

"You often hear critics wonder where foreign nations get their ideas of Americans. From ourselves, gentlemen, from ourselves! They read our literature, they see our plays, and we can't be astonished if they think Congress a huge farce, vulgarity a national characteristic, honesty a laughing stock, and that we are proud of our worst qualities."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said the Practical Man.

"We laugh at ourselves too much. It is very amusing, when you are on the inside, and understand it; but outsiders are apt to misjudge our character from our humor. If we did not constantly make a joke of corruption, of bribery, of dishonesty, of selling honor for money; if our jests about ourselves were not, for the most part, rather vulgar and even insulting, it would not be so bad. We are not supposed to laugh merrily over objectionable, low, sordid vices, unless we are willing to be accused of condemning them in some measure. The types of men we select to illustrate the humorous side of American life are not a whit less offensive than the pictures in Martin Chuzzlewit.' Let us forgive Dickens forever!"

"There's something in that, Old Man!" remarked the Fellow in the Corner.

"If some Frenchman or Englishman had written some of those farces or comedies or novels of ours, would we laugh at them?" "Perhaps not.”

"I don't say it is not all fun with us; although we know there are such things as bribery and corruption. There may be just as much of that in other lands; but it seems to me that America is the only country where we think it is funny. Really we have to thank the foreign caricaturists; they have made all kinds of fun over our manners, but they have generously avoided the coarse char

acteristics and the conditions which we joke

about, and which reflect on our general idea of honor. American humor, above all humor, sacrifices anything to the laugh.”

These extracts will give some idea of a book that is full of wise counsel and food for thought. It is not intended to be read continuously, but as a volume to take up in leisure half hours. I know I know nothing issued in recent years that is its equal in wisdom and readableness.

GEORGE HAMLIN FITCH.

Among Lippincott's October productions is a novel by Philip Verrill Mighels (now of California), entitled "The Inevitable," which is ranked high among their important books by the publishers.

Mr. Mighels' novel will doubtless be classified by many readers among the musical stories that occasionally enter the literary field, but a wider description will be required to do the volume justice. Exceptionally strong and dramatic, "The Inevitable" will stand very much by itself in this day wherein the frivolous the merely entertaining novel holds sway so amazingly. It is a serious work, concerned with a vital question of race intermixture. In the treatment of his subject Mr. Mighels has written a tale exceptionally sympathetic and wedged full of that "human interest" which gives to fiction its unshakable hold upon the reader's nature and imagination. A beautiful frontispiece has been drawn for the volume by John Wolcott Adams.

Modern Mexico for October contains the first instalment of an article on "Cortez in Mexico," by Mrs. J. K. Hudson. John Hubert Cornyn writes of "The Corner in Mexico," and A. A. Towle of “A Pilgrimage to El Desierto." John D. Brandon contributes an article on "Papantla," a curious little tropical town. given over to the vanilla industry.

"The A B C of Photography" is the title of a little text-book just issued by the Camera Craft Publishing Company, of San Francisco. It is a short and concise treatise on photography written by an amateur, Fayette J. Clute, of San Francisco, and is well calculated to interest every user of the kodak. Taking nothing for granted, Mr. Clute carries the reader through the various processes of photography, from the selection of a camera to the mounting of the finished print, in such a way that the veriest novice can appreciate and follow his teachings. The book is handsomely printed, with a distinctive cover design in red and gold. It is sold for twenty-five cents.

Mexico's greatness, as well as its picturesque value, are shown by the attention being paid to it these days by artists and writers. Among the travelers who will go into the country of Cortez on the special Southern Pacific excursion early in December are several skilful users of brush, pencil, pen and camera.