Life — May 7, 1891 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

THE RISING OF A NEW STAR IN CHICAGO. NE more Chicago poet has appeared to add force to Mr. Eugene Field’s protest against inviting Lord Ten- nyson to write the Ode for the World's Fair. We have re- copy of Chester Gore Miller's “ Chihuahua,” which of itself would have entitled him to a front seat in the recent convention of Western poets, who met at the instigation of the jealous Mr. Field, to protest against Tennyson. This re- markable social drama in four acts is “an attenipt in blank verse and prose to illustrate the terrible power of Hypnotism in its relation to crime,” and the psychology of it is evidently based on the most advanced experiments of the French school of investigators. The dedication of the poem strikes the key note with considerable force : To one of the dark agencies of life I inscribe this epitome of much, There ts also a prologue in the same wonderfully free blank verse which Mr. Miller has invented for the exigencies of a play in a new field, and in which he follows the illustrious ex- ample of Shakespeare, and gives advice to the players: Now, leading man, please do not swagger When you characterize Mr. Sumner. Neither Weary your audience with long speeches And lengthy, tiresome discourse ; For much herein is writ to cut. From internal evidence we judge that the author had in mind for “leading man,” Mr. Herbert Kelcey. brief space to summarize the plot in Chihuahua, but for the most part is developed in a Fifth avenue mansion in New I" is impossible in thi of the drama, which originates York. We can only give characteristic specimens to show the range of Mr. Miller's wit, pathos, and dramatic power. Here are a few of his delicate witticisms : Some people complain of having a skeleton in their lives ; 1 feel at times as though I owned a graveyard, It's a wise child That can manage his stepfather. Had I tears, and I probably have, I might Shed them, ‘did I rub my eyes with an onion. Mr. Miller's drama shows an acute knowledge of the mo- tives which move the “ great world,” and some of his apho- risms might find a place in the appendix to Mr. McAllister’s Handbook of Society. Here are a few of them, which we commend to that authority: ‘The American with a lineage Must have it backed with coin, or he stands Little chance with the foreigner, titled And insolvent. True, my ancestry is influential In its name, but here for once it ceased To work, Show me the woman ‘That admires not the soldier's plumes ! Still if possible, never offend a speculator ; Keep his friendship on the issue of a smile. My child, I am too old ; take one more verdant In financial fields than J, or try some one More gullible than a broker of the regular board. ‘There's your answer, the door. * * ° T is in the dramatic crises of the play, in moments of great emotion, that Mr. Miller shows his command over the blank verse used so successfully by Shakespeare in Lear. The sudden death of the host in a Fifth avenue drawing-room (where Mr. Miller shows himself very much at home) is announced as follows * comicbooks.com