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American dramatic work, and with this resolution formed he steadily refused to surrender what he conceived to be the true demand of dramatic art, though sorely tempted by wealth to be easily gained by ephemeral productions. For many years he was a student of Tolstoi, Sudermann, Ibsen, and other great veritists in literature, while the social philosophy of Henry George won his whole-hearted acceptance. In it he believed there was to be found social salvation with freedom, and to almost the day of his death he was ever ready to give his services freely for the cause of the single tax. His addresses were clear, popular, sincere, and convincing, and he contributed a magnificent service to the cause of social progress by his faithful work in this direction.

II.

Mr. Herne was worth about one hundred thousand dollars when he was overmastered by the light and determined to consecrate the remainder of his artistic career to the cause of truth in the field of dramatic expression. His "Hearts of Oak," a conventional melodrama, was phenomenally popular, but he determined on the creation of plays that should be at once serious, thoughtful, and true. His first drama in this direction was "Drifting Apart," probably the most powerful temperance sermon ever produced on the boards of a theater. It proved a financial failure, as did "The Minute Men," a pioneer Revolutionary study, though this latter was far stronger, finer, and more artistic than many recent dramatic successes among war plays. It was not difficult to understand the cause of these failures. Mr. Herne had for years been playing to audiences that demanded an exciting melodrama, filled with mock heroics, dramatic clap-trap, and spectacular effects that delighted the galleries. With his large following the new plays fell flat. The actor was speaking to them in an unknown tongue. There were in the cities in which he played thousands of persons who would have greatly enjoyed "Drifting Apart" and "The Minute Men," but few of these people had ever seen Mr. Herne, as the conventional melodrama had

little attraction for them. Hence he disappointed his old friends and had not as yet found an appreciative new audience.

A man less resolute would have given up the struggle when poverty stared him in the face, and, adopting the unworthy but popular cry of the modern commercial world, would have exclaimed, Since the people do not want good plays I will give them what they want!-and thereby become again independent. Had his home influence favored such a course, it is possible that he might have returned to the conventional, barnstorming melodramas; but in his high resolve to be true to the vital ideal, "art for progress, the beautiful useful," he was warmly seconded by his accomplished wife. Katherine Herne had entered heart and soul into the higher and broader conception of being which had so revolutionized her husband's work. Together they had studied and heartily accepted the vision of justice unfolded in the social gospel of Henry George. They had perused with delight the masterly exposition of evolution as given by the great philosophic thinkers who have made the nineteenth century forever memorable; while the rugged protests against the unreal, the artificial, and the hollow hypocrisy of a conventional literature and art by vigorous Russian, Scandinavian, and German thinkers awakened their enthusiasm and proved a positive inspiration. And now, when standing in the shadow of defeat, with fortune vanished and poverty present, Mrs. Herne courageously and steadfastly encouraged her husband to persevere.

It was during these trying years of adversity that Mr. Herne wrote "Margaret Fleming," which I think is by far his greatest dramatic creation, as it is also the most powerful protest against the double standard of morals to be found in our dramatic literature. But, fine as was the play, it was too unconventional for managers. Mr. Herne could find no means of bringing it before the public. It was at this time that Hamlin Garland, Mr. J. Henry Wiggin, and a few other friends interested themselves in the production, with the result that it was enacted for about two weeks at Chickering Hall, in Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Herne assuming the leading rôles, supported by a care

fully selected company. The presentation, however, lacked the advantage of scenic effect and other auxiliary aids, but the essential greatness of the play was felt by all the more serious in the audiences. The critics, even those who championed the conventional drama, acknowledged its power and worth.

It was this production that introduced Mr. Herne to the thoughtful public and also acquainted managers with the worth of his new work. Mr. William Dean Howells further aided the actor with some fine criticisms and by a letter to Mr. Field, of the Museum, at the time the latter was debating whether or not to accept "Shore Acres," a simple and true play of New England life which the actor had written after the completion of "Margaret Fleming." Finally Mr. Field decided to give the new play a trial. It did not prove instantaneously successful, and toward the close of the second week I remember Mr. Herne's calling at my office in a rather despondent mood. He told me that Mr. Field did not consider the play a success and was talking of taking it off at the close of the next week, and the fact that the audiences were slowly increasing did not seem to convince the skeptical manager of the value of "Shore Acres"; but by the end of the third week the play was drawing fine houses, and thenceforth to the close of the seasona period of about one hundred nights-it was a reigning success. From that time, barring the financially unfortunate venture attending the production of "Griffith Davenport," Mr. Herne enjoyed the pleasures and comforts of prosperity.

III.

Perhaps no man with noble ideals and high aspirations at all times reaches the standard that floats as a pillar of fire before the soul, and Mr. Herne, in common with others, did not at all times, even in his later years, reach his ideals. This fact he expressed to me in a letter written less than two years ago. I had given my impressions of the actor-dramatist as I knew him, in a magazine article, and Mr. Herne, who was a man of few words, wrote me in regard to this paper. "You have," he said, "given me more than I deserve. I only wish that

I were all that you say of me, and what you have said is exactly what I wish to be." In my paper I had merely given the impressions of the man that I had received from seeing him in his home, from conversations with him, and from a study of his great characters; for in a man's master creations there is ever shadowed forth much of his own nature as well as his best aspirations.

It is a fact worthy to be mentioned in passing that nowhere was Mr. Herne so passionately loved as in his own family. He was almost idolized by wife and children, while his services to the cause of the American drama have during recent years been recognized by the most eminent and competent critics on both sides of the Atlantic. In his recent work on the American stage, the very able dramatic authority, Mr. Norman Hapgood, pays the following tribute to the work of Mr. Herne for the American drama:

"Two men stand out, as far as we may see, clearly ahead of their predecessors-James A. Herne for intellectual quality supported by considerable stagecraft, and William Gillette for the playwright talent, working on ideas of his own. Their plays are equaled by single efforts of other men, but no other American dramatist has done so much of equal merit."

Mr. Herne's loyalty to truth in art and his desire to make the drama a potent factor in present-day life—a real educator, as well as a true reflector of life and the aspirations of the age-were tested in the furnace of adversity to such a degree that it revealed the presence of that high, true spirit that in every age has marked the men and women who have carried forward whatsoever is best in religion, in science, in art, and in life, in spite of a mockingly indifferent and often openly hostile conventionalism.

Boston, Mass.

B. O. FLOWER,

THE SINGLE TAX AS A HAPPY MEDIUM.

N the rush of events amidst which we live, it is not strange that there should be an almost infinite variety of opinions as to the relative importance of these events, as to their causes and consequences, and also as to the best means to be used to strengthen and perpetuate the good tendencies and to modify or destroy the evil ones.

When the tax lists are prepared, and we learn what we must pay in this way for the advantages of association, we are very apt to feel that the community is encroaching on our rights, and we proclaim the doctrines of Individualism as those which are to bring the millennium through their observance; but when our house burns or is looted by burglars, and the fire department or the police fail to protect us, we become convinced that Socialism, which shall prevent any loss or avoidable discomfort from coming to us, is that of which the prophets and seers have sung in their portrayals of the heavenly estate. This, in brief, suggests the two directions in which the thought and effort of the day are being exerted.

Individualism and Socialism-manifested in many ways. and through endless applications-are the two conflicting ideas of the time; and each, or either, if followed to its legitimate end, will win for its votary the name of “crank," if not of criminal. Each is a name to conjure with, if you would fill with palpitating dread the breast of the well-to-do and the comfortable, or rouse to a frenzy of rage the down-trodden or the impecunious, or would you fire with holy zeal the heart of the humanitarian, burdened with the sense of others' wrongs and panting with the desire to help and to rescue. For, as Socialism suggests Paris after the close of the Franco-Prussian war, it also speaks of William Morris, John Ruskin, and other benefactors of the race. As Individualism may suggest Bresci, who so recently robbed the Italian people of a beloved king, it also

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