chapter, on page 189, I suggest suppressing the orchestra entirely and
encouraging the audience to talk about the film. No photoplay people have
risen to contradict this theory, but it is a chapter that once caused me
great embarrassment. With Christopher Morley, the well-known author of
Shandygaff and other temperance literature, I was trying to prove out
this chapter. As soon as the orchestra stopped, while the show rolled on
in glory, I talked about the main points in this book, illustrating it by
the film before us. Almost everything that happened was a happy
illustration of my ideas. But there were two shop girls in front of us
awfully in love with a certain second-rate actor who insisted on kissing
the heroine every so often, and with her apparent approval. Every time we
talked about that those shop girls glared at us as though we were robbing
them of their time and money. Finally one of them dragged the other out
into the aisle, and dashed out of the house with her dear chum, saying,
so all could hear: "Well, come on, Terasa, we might as well go, if these
two talking _pests_ are going to keep this up behind us." The poor girl's
voice trembled. She was in tears. She was gone before we could apologize
or offer flowers. So I say in applying this chapter, in our present stage
of civilization, sit on the front seat, where no one can hear your
whisperings but Mary Pickford on the screen. She is but a shadow there,
and will not mind.