Judge — September 18, 1920 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Drown by Heawax Pataen A Vamp, Red-Headed Matches, and Quitters By Benjamin De Casseres The Eternal Vamp HO would have believed that the gentle author of Jean Christophe —over whose lapis-lazuli soul so many of us shed little opal tears—would ever con- tract the habit of laughing diabolically, like Satan and Tom Masson? It all came about through Romain Rolland falling into a green sickness known as pacifism when the war broke out—a Romain salad sickness, so to speak. Nature had dealt him a raw hand—she made him a sentimental idealist and then pulled off a war right under his window. Rolland retired to the Woolworth Tower of Switzerland and diabolically. All sentimental idealists smile diabolically when Truth lands on their conks. Then he took his pen in hand and wrote “Liluli” (Boni & Liveright) And he wrote some- thing tremendous—a farce that no “movie” concern or dra- matic producer will bid for. It is too big, too true, humorous—humorous in the sense that life is a colo: Liluli is the Goddess of Ilusion. The New Republic would call her the Ideal. Hiram Johnson would call her Chimera She rules everything and everybody—diplomats, intellectual Amendment-busters, lovers, patriots, Billy Sunday, Bolshev ists, tenors, moon-grabbing babies, Nicky Amsteins and George Bemard Shaws. The world is her stage and we are her John Barrymores and Eva Tanguays. e’ hussy —fair-haired, slim, big blue eyes, girlish arms, a Galli-Curci voice and a Mack Sennett waistline. Now, there is one old guy who thinks he’s immune from the wiles of Liluli. His name is Polichinello and he bolted her Convention of Boobs in the Very Beginning. He is the Lord of Laughter, sneer: ties a Mocking Intelligence on his lips and in his eye. He has an enormous hump, and while humanity argues and utters its various tribal slogans he d scratches his bump. But in the final battle ions and ideals, when the vamp Liluli sends us awning Abyss together and notwithstanding, Polichi nello goes down under the hea for the Laughing Intelligence of man is only another one of lil’ o’ Uli's marionettes. 1 after you've read all other books. wo wood-cuts by Frans Masereel. They are as extraordinary as the book. The HAVE often wondered how great singers got their start, and also why. We all know what becomes of them. They get entombed in music-boxes and finish their days by keep- ing hard-working night workers awake all day But how do our opera stars get started? Why are some bom to sing, and the rest of us bom only to croak? I found the vocal mystery ef the ages solved on page 4 of a “Quaker Singer's lections,” David Bispham (Macmillan). At the dar- age of two he began to feed himself on red-headed sulphur It upset his little internal thermos so much that he Manna of Barytones ling matches. His father was stupefied, for instead set up a terrible bawling. Ss from of yowling like a regular kid David was crying forth a one of Beethoven's comic oper; This was on Seventh Street, in Philadelphia, back in 1850. James Huneker lived next door. He was sent for and adminis. a regular daily diet of red-headed sulphur matches to the coming great barytone. Jim and Dave were pla mates, but politics, Jim ad rian derby for 7 incoln’s head and Dav alistic golf cap. David continued eating these matches regularly, the sulphur going clean to his boots, whence comes that great organ- like voice that intones Kurwenal, Beckmesser, Alberich and Killicrankie O! He played Hunding once up in the Met. He ordered a meal from Gazzo's, on the comer, to be served to him after the first act. The waiter dumped the meal on the stage before him just as he was relating his last bear-hunt to Sieglinde. An appallingly human and fascinating book for a barytone to have written. A tenor always keeps a diary; it is well that a barytone has “Recollections.” The Quitters RENA SELCOSS had been born on American soil. She was an almost admitted daughter of the Man with the Hoe who tilled the soil, and a quasi-reputed grand- daughter of Maud Muller who raked in the hay on the soil. ‘Three men of varying size sweatbands wanted to make Brena their week-end wife. But Brena’s soul, like her décolleté, was above suspicion. She had played Caesar's wife in one-night stands. These three men, one after the next, began to vanish (“The Vanishing Men,” by Richard Washbum C! hild; E. P. Dutton & Co.). Dark clouds began to segregate over the head of Brena. Ill winds began to blow. Dame Rumor laid down her knitting and looked as though she was going to have an inkling. Muriel Benham was the Species. She played tennis sus- y. it ras one of the Allies, English—but who igh-powered nature with rubber-heel eyes. The three men are still vanished as the theme tangles around Chapter XVI. Pete De Wolf left his traveling bag on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk while he went in to buy some alcoholic almonds. The traveling bag vanished. The traffic cop, when Pete complained, signaled “Go!” to a gra The three men are still not heard from when Colby Penning- ton curses prohibition from his club window near E. P. Dutton & Company. A man passes witha scar on his eardrum. A white wing whistles and adjusts his spats superciliously. Brena passes in her horse-cab, raising clouds of fate all around her. It is night in London (New York Central time). It is 2 A.at in Patchogue. The sun is throwing off its blankets of darkness in Odessa. _The mesh closes around and around. The Baffling Enigma continued