New York audiences are almost the only ones in the country that ever manifest any particular desire to gaze upon the dramatist. I heard a man cry "Author!" once at a "first night" in Chicago, and the ushers were about to eject him when the manager explained to them that the enthusiast was acting with perfect propriety.
I have told you, in another part of this book, of the oratorical talent of Augustus Thomas, who is the most impressive of before-the-curtain monologists. He makes a fine appearance on the stage, self-possessed and well-dressed, and his little talks invariably are brief and witty and well-rounded. So, too, are those of Eugene Presbrey. Paul Armstrong's undiplomatic words have been known to prove a "last straw" on the graves of his failures, and Edith Wharton and Charlotte Thompson, clever women both but not prepossessing, almost turned into burlesque the "first night" of "The Awakening of Helena Richie." Charles Klein is not big enough physically to fill the eye, and David Belasco, with his trick of being pushed violently to the front and of fingering his forelock, creates an impression of insincerity and preparedness. William Gillette has all an actor's skill in appealing to an audience, and, I am told, saved the day--or, rather, the night--for his "Sherlock Holmes" in London. George Ade and Sydney Rosenfeld are amusing on "the apron", but other brilliant men, like Edwin Milton Royle and Richard Harding Davis, are not at their best when obliged to say "thank you." Mr. Davis figured in a neat bit of good humor in New Haven, where, after the third act of Mr. Thomas' adaptation of his "Soldiers of Fortune", Mr. Thomas assumed his identity and he pretended to be Mr. Thomas.
[Illustration: "_The author--as you imagine him, and as he proves to be_"]
English playwrights are much more at ease than are American. Henry Arthur Jones, A. W. Pinero, Henry V. Esmond, and even young Hubert Henry Davies look well and talk well when they have occasion to "speak out in meeting." George Bernard Shaw's witticism when somebody in the gallery hissed while he was making a curtain speech has become famous. The Irish Voltaire had just referred to the play of the evening, the third act of which had been concluded, when this sound of disapprobation cleft the circumambient atmosphere. "Ah!" said Mr. Shaw to the disturber, "you and I are quite agreed, but we seem in the minority."