sequious in character, unless they engaged in abstract discussion of the Arts or turned to the contemplation of Nature, which was the rarest of expedients. The letters of de Maintenon (widow of the poet Scrarron) were naturally centred upon the King and in them can be seen the depths of her bigotry and the schemes she laid for securing and maintaining boundless influence over Louis.

But the letters of Madame are different. She was essentially a woman of the don't-give-a-damn-what-I-say type, and for this very reason her letters have for many years been invaluable to historians. In a letter to the Duchess of Hanover she says: "You may be sure that I am very much annoyed with the King for treating me like a serving wench. That would have been all right for his precious Maintenon.* She was born for that sort of treatment but I was not." Most people found it dangerous to write of their Sovereign in such terms even in private letters, which were always liable to be opened by the notorious Louvois and their contents communicated to the King.

The

When Louis came to the throne licentiousness was openly practiced. King, indeed, set an example to the Court by his amours with the beautiful La Valliére and later with Madame de Montespan. But after the Queen's death and after the King had fallen a victim to the wiles of Madame de Maintenon, the whole Court became devout, and the courtiers remained libertine in Paris and became devout at Versailles. All this Madame's letters show most clearly.

A touch of Teutonic humor is not absent. Referring to a Royal visit to the Armies, she says: "Madame de Chartres, Madame. la Duchesse and the Princess de Conti have all three returned from the expedition pregnant, so the King cannot pretend that this journey was a fruitless one. . . ."

"I

Her life at Court was not happy. She was continually being placed in Monsieur's or the King's bad books by the scurrilous reports of her enemies, which were to the effect that she was carrying on an "affaire" with some gallant. These were but malicious lies, and that becomes plainer after reading Madame's description of herself: have always been plain, and since I had smallpox have become more so, and my figure is outrageous. I am as square as a dice, my skin is red, tinged with yellow; I am beginning to go grey and have pepper-and-salt tresses; there are wrinkles on my forehead and round my eyes, my nose is as crooked as it always was, and is pitted with smallpox to

Madame de Maintenon, a mistress of the King, later his wife. She was known to the Parisiens as "Madame de Maintenant," meaning the mistress of the moment.

boot; as are also my cheeks, which are pendulous with large jaws and jagged teeth. My mouth is changed, too, having become larger and wrinkled at the corners. Behold what a beautiful object I am. . ." To be sure this was

+Louis' attempt to extend the boundaries of France to the Rhine, a policy said by some to have been followed by ex-Premier Poincaré. To this day Germans remind the French of the unprovoked attack on the German principalities and duchies when they justify their present actions against Germany by the latter's conduct in the Franco-Prussian War. This is the danger of historical parallels.

Bierstadt-Robert M. McBride & Co. ($2.50).

The jacket of this book says it is “a candid and impartial account of the real facts of the Near East situation of today." The content of the book shows it to be one of the most glaring of all partisan books that have ever been printed on the Near East tangle.

Mr. Bierstadt says in his preface that the State Department called his publisher's attention to "grave errors" in his work. He continues that, at the end of a day's discussion, "the Department was unable to point to any error in fact. They simply disagreed with the conclusions I had drawn." Any one who had only the vaguest idea of what the Near East stands for could hardly fail to side with the State Department.

The book in the main deals with the persecution of the Christian minorities by the Turks. There is little exaggeration here, and in the historical background, so copiously supplied, no major error of fact is detectable. The partisanship of the book lies in its grave omissions. This can best be shown by example:

"The Bosnian revolt had spread to Bulgaria, and the Turks put down the insurrection by massacring more than 12,000 men, women and children. Gladstone flamed out in his pamphlet entitled 'The Bulgarian Horrors'..."

All very true, but subsequent enquiries showed that the Turks had not been unprovoked and that Serbs, Bosnians, and Montenegrans had committed crimes undreamed of by the Turks. It was said of the Montenegrans that they "counted the prowess of their warriors by the number of Turkish noses they collected, those with a piece of hirsute [hairy] upper lip attached counting for most as being those of male opponents." After that, even Gladstone was forced to recant.

The book is interesting mainly in that it shows the extent to which the Near East can be misunderstood and misinterpreted.

A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH PEOPLEEdward Maslin Hulme-The Century Co. ($4.00). The high enthusiasm with which this book ought to be received would fail to render it justice. Without any doubt, it is the best précis of British civilization which has appeared in recent years. Its clarity and simplicity, adumbrated by a romantic tinge, which lies in the way the author tells his story, raise this book almost to the rank of an epic of the British Isles.

Appeared serially in The Christian Herald (TIME, Dec. 17).

Studies in Murder*

The combination of a discussion of crime with a literary style is rare in fiction and almost unknown outside of it; and it has remained for Mr. Pearson to discover that genuine murders, as distinguished from detective stories, are capable of a reflective and entertaining treatment. Here he has presented accounts of five historic AmeriI can murders, beginning with the Borden case in Fall River, and including the engrossing story of the murders on the barkentine Herbert Fuller-an astonishing marine piece which outdoes Clark Russell and in some points is suggestive of a situation used by Conrad in Chance.

SO

The Stories. The Borden case, in which an old gentleman and his wife were killed under circumstances baffling that there seemed to be no possible solution, and which affected Fall River's sensibilities so profoundly as to lead the library officials to exclude a history of it from their shelves, supplies the longest and most absorbing of the studies. "There are in it," Mr. Pearson says, "all the elements which make such an event worth reading about," and he is entirely right. It is unquestionably a fascinating "problem in human character and in human relations," although in the bitter discussion which it aroused some people were obliged to fall back on the alarming theory that it must have been an act of Divine intervention.

The Herbert Fuller case presented the exceptional circumstance that both judge and jury knew positively that they had the criminal before them, but were unable to say who he was. There were twelve people aboard the barkentine, including an innocent bystander, when-it was about two in the morning and they were at sea-one of them came into the cabin and killed the captain, his wife and his second mate with an ax. One of the remaining nine must have been responsible, and all of them were brought into court. But the jury was so doubtful that the man it convicted is now selling peanuts in Atlanta.

The other cases discussed are interesting but less striking; though none of the sketches is in the least like a 'detective story. They lack, for one thing, the neat solution at the end; in only one of the cases was the mystery solved beyond any possibility of doubt and in the Borden case it was never solved at all. In that respect fact gains somewhat over fiction; it gains also in Mr. Pearson's method of presentation. Like Lizzie Borden, he does not "do things in a hurry." His entirely healthy interest in his subject has a

*STUDIES IN MURDER-Edmund Lester Pearson-Macmillan ($3.00).

are too obvious to be interesting. Mr. Pearson demonstrates that there are murders which are great in themselves, not because they involve the fact that someone has been killed, but because they involve great situations. Miss Lizzie Borden in her house at Fall River makes an unforgettable picture; and it was not the crime on the Fuller but the situation. aboard of her next morning which is absorbing. The difficulty about ordinary newspaper crime is that it is so pitifully undramatic. Mr. Pearson shows that at long intervals murder can rise to the heights of Art.

The Author. Edmund Lester Pearson, graduated from Harvard in 1902 with what he terms "the fearsome degree of Bachelor of Library Science," has since been working in various libraries. In the copyright office of the Library of Congress he held what he designates as "the only library position that ever gave him any real exercise"-an exalted post in charge of all the circus posters deposited for copyright, which had to be spread out on the floor and measured with a yardstick. "To that," says he, "I owe my taste in Art."

He has since conducted a weekly department in the Boston Evening Transcript, called "The Librarian." Among his writings: The Old Librarian's Al

manack, The Believing Years, Voyage of the Hoppergrass, Theodore Roosevelt, The Secret Book.

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE DARK NIGHT-May SinclairMacmillan ($2.00). In this novel in free verse, Miss Sinclair appears to have created a new literary form. It is a dramatic narrative poem recounting Elizabeth's love for the poet Victora love which lasts, even when Victor deserts her for a younger woman, and glows triumphant when he returns to her, disillusioned, blind. At times the unusual form of its telling seems to create a strained, disjointed effect, with false emphasis. But for the most part, the lines flow with vivid, restrained and often impassioned beauty.

THE RIGHT PLACE-C. E. Montague -Doubleday, Page & Co. ($2.50). Mr. Montague, in "holiday humor," here lets flow delicious cataracts of amenities, which must have been dammed up within him for many years. Whatever delights him from the discovery of a glassy, Swiss lake to the discussion of "faces and fortunes of cities"-is in The Right Place, the reading of which is in itself a holiday. Borrowing the Montague imagination, one experiences the cream of excursions. It is not, however, a book of travels; it is a series of enchanting essays wherein remembered places served the author as they served the artist, Turner; that is, as points of departure for his fancy. Even the anticipation of a voyage, or the reading of a map, is enough to start the author "ringing the bell" (to use his phrase) "so to speak, at the front door of heaven." While searching for the sunset on the other side of a snowy mountain, or for beauty in Liverpool, the author captures a special brand of happiness, which, he says, "can only be caught by hunting for something else."

WIND'S END- Herbert AsquithScribner's ($2.00). Margot in her famed autobiography referred to her step-son, Herbert, as the poet of the Asquith family. Poet Asquith, who is also a barrister, has written a story of violence and mystery. Perhaps, in his decision to burst into prose, he was guided by his father's self-admitted passion for mystery stories; but certainly he has not been able to capture the exPremier's brilliant style, nor distinguish himself by wielding an audacious pen after the manner of his step-mother. Wind's End is well written in good English; it is a book full of horror, ghosts and detectives, not entirely convincing. It is a book that might be much better and again might be much worse.

CINEMA

The New Pictures

The Signal Tower. Simple, straightforward rôles, played without a flourish, directed by anyone with some feeling for proportion and suspense, make passable pictures. Run them off in a mountainous, shaggy, back-woods setting, make Wallace Beery the villain, Rockcliffe Fellowes the hero, Virginia Valli the heroine, and you may turn out the best deep-chested melodrama of the year. That is what Director Clarence Brown did, the story chosen being that of an honest, overalled signalman and his wife, whose hair-raising vicissitudes, domestic and vocational, are caused by a hulking railroad sheik. Punished once for snatching kisses, this sheik chooses a stormy night for his revenge. Runaway freight cars endanger the Limited, occupy the signalman, give time for the resheiking of the signalman's brave wife. The wreck is a weak fake, but fighting, business, and minor characters all swell the picture's score.

Bread. A soggy, tasteless adaptation of the novel by Charles G. Norris, leavened only by an improvement in the acting of Mae Busch. Mr. Norris, to encourage home-life and the patter of tiny feet, drew a penny-scrimping stenographer to whom marriage was bliss at first, then mere unbearable pennyscrimping. She left her husband, never went back, was sorry ever after. the screen she comes gushing back for the usual reconciliatory osculation. Never were worse sub-titles committed.

On

Behold This Woman. Another picture of Hollywood, by Hollywood, for Hollywood. All points of interest in the story are seen as in real life, except, of course, the characters. It is good to know that they are only acting, for Irene Rich, as a sophisticated screen queen, breaks down in her car among the hills, drops in on Charles Post (as Stephen Strangeway, hillman), lets herself in for his strong-man love. He does not recover until there has been displayed a good deal of vamping, countervamping, and ancient details of the Hollywood "sugar-papa" system. The scenario was lifted from the quivering pages of E. Phillips Oppenheim, but Charles Post's abdomen and eyebrows are as depressing as ever.

The Sideshow of Life. If cinemawrights had not so low an opinion of the vocabularies of movie-goers, they might have called this picture The Mountebank after W. J. Locke's story which it dramatized. Ernest Torrence, as the Mountebank, plays all the chords of Locke's sentimentalism as clown and brigadier general in worthy re-creation of the intinerant romance.

New Play

Sweeney Todd. Rich, ruddy, raucous melodrama, vintage of 1842, in two murderous acts and eight veinchilling scenes, telling the bloody history of The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, was revived. Wendell Phillips Dodge, producer, calculated

ROBERT VIVIAN

A throat-slitting barber

(accurately) upon obtaining the same effect as that produced by an old family tin-type with the head-clamps showing.

The plot curdles. Home from the bounding main with a wreath of gigantic pearls for his sweetheart, a sailor man stops on his joyful way for a shave. Woe is his, for Sweeney Todd, barber, gnawed by the weevil of avarice, has long had the vile habit of dropping his rich customers through the floor, chair and all, to a subterranean death chamber; there slitting their throats, robbing them, erasing all traces of crime by transforming the corpses into "veal" pies, succulent, rich in gravy, spiced with hairs and buttons. Such is the mariner's fate-until the last scene where he unexpectedly returns, all in one piece, in time to witness the confounding of his malefactor by three of the latter's former apprentices.

Triumphant virtue thumps splendidly in the chaste breast of Johanna Oakley, his faithful hoop-skirted light-of-love; the gallant thorax of Colonel Jeffrey of the Indian Army, confidant and sub-hero. Thirteen other characters, broadly "in period," pad out the piece to bursting.

Nineteenth Century atmospherecomplete with cigar-chewing "house manager," candle footlights, handbill including an original notice by Dickens-is built up to give the audience a sense of superiority that enables it to laugh not only at the play but at the whole age which took such plays seriously.

"No one should miss seeing Sweeney Todd," wrote Charles Dickens when he reviewed the play for The London Morning Chronicle in 1842. Very similar remarks were passed by Manhattan critics last week.

Robert Vivian's "Sweeney" is gorgeous; Percy Baverstock's "Colonel Jeffrey" a masterpiece of recreation.

The Best Plays

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:

Drama

COBRA-The fireworks of sex touched off somewhat luridly but albeit effectively.

THE WONDERFUL VISIT-Another revival of the Wells-Ervine fantasy of an angel rushing in where fools tread.

Comedy

THE SHOW-OFF-One of the best comedies of this or any other seasona life-size pastel portrait of a gabby American at full blast.

FATA MORGANA Saucy Hungarian comedy, depicting the effects of the heat of the grand passion, for one night, on the half-baked young mind.

EXPRESSING WILLIE-Delightfully satiric jabs at the urge to parade one's ego under the banner of Self-Expression.

FASHION, OR LIFE IN NEW YORKThe "Awkward Age" engagingly revived by the Provincetown Players, with all indigenous sentiments, asides, characters and chairs painted on the rolled-up curtain.

SWEENEY TODD-Reviewed in this issue.

BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK-Wholesale homicide of a babbitt family; a dream play, almost Gilbertian in its attempt to set the world right by standing it on its head.

Musical

Out of the hopper of musical comedy pour the following morsels for summer consumption: Keep Kool, Charlot's Revue, I'll Say She Is, Kid Boots, Innocent Eyes.

Yale Tapestries

Once owned by the eldest daughter of Elihu Yale (supposed founder of the University), four old English tapestries were sold at Sotheby's (London) for £6,800. The designs are of IndoChinese character with innumerable buildings, trees, exotic birds, all on black backgrounds. They belong to a well-known type worked by Vanderbank, who got his inspiration from lacquer screens. Signed panels by him are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Two of these panels bear the mark of the Mortlake and other factories. The largest is 17 ft. 9 in. by 10 ft., the smallest 8 ft. 4 in. by 11 ft. The tapestries were in the possession of the family of the Earl of Guilford from the time of the marriage of the eldest daughter of Elihu Yale to Dudley North, son of the second Baron Guilford, and remained at Glenham, Suffolk, until the recent sale of that estate by Lord Guilford.

Golden Daggers

When an empire falls, its riches are the more readily seen from its ruins. So with the empire of Russia. The Soviet Government, to refute charges of looting, has thrown open to public view the Hermitage, Leningrad, renowned Museum and Art Gallery of the Romanoffs. Once more is revealed the enormous wealth, hoarded through centuries, on which the old régime rested. In the Hermitage are exhibited 45 of the greatest paintings of Rembrandt and a collection of Persian objets d'art that is indubitably the finest in the world, both in the number and the quality of the pieces. Golden daggers from Turkestan, jade seals, incense-burners embellished with rubies, pots set with a thousand emeralds, and blades from Damascus curved like evil moons-the treasure of a fairy-tale empire that came to an end, as is the way with fairy tales --and empires.

Bieg of Armour

The most important award in the field of architecture in the U. S., the Paris Prize of the Society of BeauxArts Architects, was won by Harry Kurt Bieg, 24, student of the Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago; S. R. Moore of Columbia University was second. The prize constitutes the holder the guest of the French Government for two and a half years at the École des Beaux Arts. The Architects' Association also provides $3,000 for living and traveling expenses during the period.

This year's problem was to plan a "Transportation Institute," with mus

eum, laboratories, shops and fields included. When the problem was set, months ago, those devising it felt they had thought of something that had never been done before; two weeks ago, they were surprised to see a newsdispatch from Washington saying that in that city an association of leading engineers had been formed to erect (in coöperation with the Smithsonian Institution) a great museum of engineering progress in transportation and industry. The prize design may be chosen for Washington. It differed from all others in one feature. The great steel shaft over the central portion of the building made an integral part of the design, and might be useful as a mooring-mast for aircraft or radio purposes.

Mrs. Jack Gardner

In her Venetian palace, surrounded by rare, beautiful and very precious treasures of Art-a collection estimated second only to that of John Pierpont Morgan-Mrs. Jack Gardner of Boston died at the age of 85. Fenway Court is one of the most glorious monuments to American wealth. Its marble Renaissance doorway opens to the public a few days each year. Virtually all of the stones in the structure were brought from Venice. Around the central court are balconies brought from the Ca' d'Oro, the most beautiful Gothic palace on the Grand Canal. The pavement is an ancient Roman one. Arab, Greek, Roman, Gothic and Renaissance sculpture fills the niches, flanks, the broad stair. Off the adjoining corridor is a chapel from a monastery. The rooms are crowded with many world-famed paintings, decorated with furnishings that are authentic works of Art in their own right. There are Italian cassone, papal chairs, a cheminée of Francis the First. Spanish embossed leather covers the walls of one room. Among the artists represented are Raphael, Veronese, Titian, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Giotto, Pollaiuolo, da Fabriano, Dürer, Holbein, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera, Velasquez, Sargent, Zorn, La Farge, Whistler. Three of the most famous paintings are da Fabriano's Madonna and Child, Titian's magnificent Rape of Europa, and the glorious Velasquez portrait Pope Innocent X. It is hoped that the collection will still be available to students and lovers of Art as it always has been under its late mistress.

Quite as much as for her Art treasures was "Mrs. Jack" famed for her eccentricities. In the conventional chill

of Boston weather, her exotic personality bloomed.

Under an imported ceiling depicting the more unprintable scenes from Ovid, she held "salons" in Old World style, and thither flocked celebrities American and European. She hired a lion from Bostock Circus, took it home for a pet. She mastered jiu jitsu, and many a corpulent matron strove to do likewise to keep up. She admired Sandow, famed strong man, and sat unconcernedly in a box to see Jim Corbett, at a time when such behavior was, for a lady, unheard of. She hired Paderewski on one occasion, distributing tickets to all who wished to hear him. She sponsored a newsboys' baseball team. At 73 she engaged M. Kosloff to teach her Russian dance steps.

One Spring day in 1889, her magnificently equipped carriage rolled up to the dignified Church of St. John the Evangelist. She alighted, dressed in the modern equivalent of sack-cloth and ashes, carrying a pail and scrubbingbrush, 'dropped to her knees, scrubbed the tiling, "did penance for her sins."

She was recognized as the chief figure in at least four novels: Marion Crawford's To Leeward; Hamilton Aide's Voyage of Discovery, and two others, Mrs. Harry St. John and Ralph Saint Claire, by Count Zuboff (who hanged himself in 1896).

Withal, she gave generously to numberless charities, assisting young musicians and artists, encouraging tenement children in love of beauty by offering cash prizes for the best flower displays in their window-boxes, contributing substantially to the first aviation meet held in America (at Squantum, Mass., in 1910).

She was, in toto, a fascinating, daring, exotic personage, never pretty, always "smart," a 16th Century Venetian nail in the hub of just-yesterday.

Prodigy

While investigating asbestos beds in the Ural Mountains, a Soviet engineer, M. Troutman, himself an amateur artist, met a 14-year-old Russian boy, Peter Miranov, found promise in his drawings. Troutman brought the boy back with him to Moscow, showed his work to Malieva, who declared that, apart from minor technique, he could teach him nothing, as the boy possessed the rarest of natural gifts-correct draftsmanship. Troutman continued further, interested the Soviet authorities, who have recently commissioned the boy to travel through the South to do landscapes for the State gallery. One of Peter's drawings was shown to Sir William Orpen, who does portraits for £1,000. Said he: "Remarkable."

Melba Farewell

A queue of people waited all night and all day outside the doors of His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. At an auction sale, held from the stage, tickets were sold-some at 100 guineas each. It was Dame Nellie Melba's farewell appearance-Melba, for over 20 years the world's greatest singer, true successor to Patti. The vast audiences went wild with joy, cheered and cheered-and eight carloads of flowers were carried to the stage.

Helen Porter Mitchell (Melba) born in 1859, made her first public appearance at six years of age at a schoolconcert, when she sang Comin' Thro' the Rye to a delighted audience. She received a good musical education, mostly at the piano, married one Captain Charles Armstrong when 23 and sang and played at private musical soirées in Melbourne. But, because of some prejudice against her early marriage to a well-to-do man, the Australian public ranked her "an amateur." So she departed for Paris in 1884, trained her voice and studied hard-under the famed Mme. Marchesi, adopted the name of Melba, hastily derived from Melbourne. She made her début in Brussels in 1887, as "Gilda" in Verdi's Rigoletto and in Covent Garden (London) in 1888, when she sang the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor which always remained her favorite rôle. In 1893, she appeared at La Scala, Milan, and made her first visit to the U. S. Then began her brilliant career; her "liquid voice" became known in every opera house in the world, in Germany, Austria, Spain, England, Holland, France. She made many visits to the U. S.

Owing to her continuous engagements, her private house in Paris was seldom occupied, except during the holidays of her little son who was at school in England.

Critics have complained of her coldness as an actress. Triumph was in her voice.

Last week Dame Melba announced at this one special farewell performance at Melbourne she had undertaken to raise £20,000 for limbless and tuberculous soldiers. The eight carloads of flowers which were presented to her, she gave to hospitals.

Mascagni's Visit

Many, many years ago an opera called Cavalleria Rusticana was composed. It proved, as a vaudevillian would say, an immediate wow. Its Intermezzo, written as a time-filler to cover the distribution and consumption of oranges between

the acts, has been scored for every known combination of instruments, including flute and banjo, hand-organ, and the voice of John McCormack.

The young man in the checked Victorian suit who composed Cavalleria followed it up with many others. Practically every one of these was a comparative flop. Pietro Mascagni remains a one-opera man (which, after all, is

Paul Thompson

PIETRO MASCAGNI He scored a wow

better than a no-opera man, particularly if the one opera is a Cavalleria). It is now 22 years since Mascagni visited the U. S. He arrives here next month, together with the score of his new Piccolo Marat, which has been successful at La Scala in Milan and the San Carlo in Naples. There is a chance that a howling success here will make it his "second" opera.

Pietro will be accompanied by Giuseppe Radaelli, Agostino Capuzzo, Rino Oldrati, Irma Vigano, Maria LecerCasale, Adriana Boccanera, Enrico Nani, Francesco Novelli and Luciana Donaggio, singers. Signors Alfredo Salmaggi and Antonio Ferrara have already arrived as couriers and business managers. They have made arrangements for the composer to conduct six open-air operatic performances in Brooklyn, and a two-weeks' "season" at the Manhattan Opera House.

Laboratory

The West Point Army Band, accompanied by the penetrating soprano voice of Nannette Guilford, delivered the National Anthem. Margaret Anglin, trage

dienne, gave a dramatic reading. Frederick A. Wallis, Commissioner of Correction, made a speech on "spiritual tendencies." A battery of "seventyfives" roared a salute of thirteen guns One of the gunners caught his hand in a breechblock. A physician had to be called. . . .

All this happened by way of celebration of the laying of the cornerstone of what is to be the "American Insti tute of Operatic Art" at Stony Point, N. Y., on the 145th anniversary of Mad Anthony Wayne's famous victory over the Redcoats on that spot. Max Rabinoff, impresario, is the guiding spirit of the enterprise, although the act of laying the stone was performed by William H. King, junior U. S. Senator from Utah, and although the principal address was delivered by H. W. L. Hubbard, critic for The Chicago Tribune.

"This institute," explained Mr. Hubbard, "is not to be a school, but a laboratory, where honor pupils of conservatories and music schools can be tested out and developed as their talents merit. If they have no ability at all, they will be advised to enter some other line. Those who pass the tests successfully will be kept here from May to October. They will have the best teachers and will be trained in six or seven operas. In October a company will be sent out to tour the country. It will give really good opera at a price most people can afford-perhaps $3 or $4 for the best seats. In coming years, it is expected that at least six or seven companies will be sent out.

"The operas, too, will be translated into English and sung in that language. The idea is to make it a centre for American operatic art-for singers, composers, dancers, scenic artists and all who have to do with operatic production. The ultimate investment will be over $1,000,000."

The Stony Point stage is to be built of rough stone, and will equal that of the Metropolitan in size. The theatre will be of Greek or open-air type. Seats will be provided for 600, but 12,000 to 15,000 more will be able to watch the performances from the adjacent grassy slopes. There will also be dormitories and a library of music and folklore. Maestro Rabinoff, who lives nearby, has already built the "largest scenic studio. in the world" on the spot. Here have been painted several of those canvases which subsequently flapped so merrily in the back-stage breezes of the Metropolitan.