Life — March 3, 1898 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

> LIFE: 173 The new servant to His Lordship, who awaits arrival of an heir: YER GRACE, IT'S A LADYSHIP. above all, a female chorus with good looks, symmetry and sprightliness, and the Tenderloin public will make much of such material as is here described. In such a piece—which fs called a comic opera, but isn't—the people in the leading parts are, to a large degree, responsible for its success or favor. Here two or three of them are really amusing. Mr. William Norris gives us something new in this style of entertainment— originality. Mr. Carroll gives us the conventional, hard- working comedian of the Wilson-Hopper- Daniels school. Miss Merri Osborne is not so silly as her name might imply, and, if she could prevail on the adapters to take some of the cheap toughness out of her lines, would be a beneficial sight for depressed people. Miss Mabel Bouton is pretty, grace- ful, and supplies a tremendous amount of vivacity. Miss Dorothy Morton's singing is all right, but she would appear to better advantage as the young bride if she took two courses—one under a teacher of acting and the other in Mr. William Muldoon’s school for the reduction of superfluous adipose. With proper clision, “A Normandy Wedding” will provide excellent amusement for the more than ten million who like this sort of thing. Metcalye. not cease to be a gentleman on be- coming an author; that publish- Lost Opportunities. ing a book did not release him from the ordinary reserves and FEW generations ago there was a in fx om, restraints of good breeding; and general impression that a man need that it was as incumbent upon the man of letters as upon the man of law to keep up the dignity of his profession. Indeed, in those unprogressive days it was thought that an author was read because he had something to say and ay it, and a writer who had tried to increase the sale of his works by giving to the public intimate details of his private life would have been looked upon as a candidate either for the madhouse or for public con- tempt and social ostracism. * * . E have gotten bravely over all that in these times. We know that the poet, like the politician, is in it for what he can make; that genius {s a small matter com- pared with ingenuity in puffing oneself; that a writer, to be successful, must not shrink from any form of self- exhibition, and that advertising methods which would be looked upon as rather discreditable by barnstormers or venders of patent medicines, are cminently proper for aspirants to literary fame. In considering this change, it is sad to think of the op- portunities lost through the prejudices of an earlier day. Scott might have made a colossal fortune by properly utilizing the loss of his old one; Shelley could have lived in comfort all his days on his expulsion from Oxford: YES, THIS I8 MOTHER AND DACOMTER, BUT—