[Illustration]
We often wonder whether people are really as human as they appear, or is
it only our imagination? Everybody, we suggest, thinks of others as
being excessively human, with all the frailties and crotchets
appertaining to that curious condition. But each of us also (we are not
dogmatic on this matter) seems to regard himself as existing on a
detached plane of observation, exempt (save in moments of vivid crisis)
from the strange whims of humanity en masse.
For example, consider the demeanour of people at a theatre while waiting
for the curtain to go up. To note the censoriousness with which they
study each other, one concludes that each deems himself (herself)
singularly blessed as the repository of human correctness.
Incidentally, why is it that one gets so thirsty at the theatre? We
never get thirsty at the movies, or not nearly so thirsty. The other
evening we drank seven paper cups full of water in the intermissions of
a four-act play.
The presence of people sitting behind one is the reason (we fancy) for a
great deal of the queer antics that take place while one is waiting for
the curtain to rise, particularly when it is twenty minutes late in
going up as it was at a certain theatre the other evening. People behind
one have a horrible advantage. One knows that they can hear everything
you say, unless you whisper it in a furtive manner, which makes them
suspect things far worse than any one would be likely to say in a
Philadelphia theatre, except, of course, on the stage. The fact that you
know they can overhear you, and intend to do so, leads one on to make
the most outrageous, cynical, and scoffish remarks, particularly to
denounce with fury a play that you may be enjoying quite passably well.
All over the house you will hear (after the first act) men saying to
their accompanying damsels, "How outrageously clumsy that act was. I
can't conceive how the director let it get by." Now they only say this
because they think it will make the people behind feel ashamed for
having enjoyed such a botch. But does it? The people in the row behind
immediately begin to praise the play vigorously, for the benefit of the
people behind _them_; and in a minute you see the amusing spectacle of
the theatre cheering and damning by alternate rows.
Here and there you will see a lady whispering something to her escort,
and will notice how ladies always look backward over a lily shoulder
while whispering. They want to see what effect this whispering will have
on the people behind. There is a deep-rooted feud between every two rows
in an audience. The front row, having nobody to hate (except possibly
the actors), take it out in speculating why on earth anybody can want to
sit in the boxes, where they can see nothing.
What the boxes think about we are not sure. We never sat in a box except
at a burlicue.
And then a complete essay might be written on the ads in the theatre
program--what high-spirited ads they are! How full of the savour and
luxurious tang of the _beau monde_! How they insist on saying
_specialite_ instead of specialty!
Well, all we meant to say when we began was, the heroine was Only
Fair--by which we mean to say she was beautiful and nothing else.