Right here the first obstacle would be encountered. Club members,

accustomed to be assigned for study subjects like "The Metope of the
Parthenon" or "The True Significance of Hyperspace," will not easily
comprehend that they are really desired to put briefly on paper original
ideas about something that they know at first hand. Mrs. Jones makes
better sponge cake than any one in town; the fact is known to all her
friends. If sponge cake is a desirable product, why should not the woman
who has discovered the little knack that turns failure into success, and
who is proud of her ability and special knowledge, tell her club of it,
instead of laboriously copying from a book--or, let us say, from two or
three books--some one else's compilation of the facts ascertained at
second or third hand by various other writers on "The Character of the
Cid"? Why should not Mrs. Smith, who was out over night in the blizzard of
1888, recount lier experiences, mental as well as physical? Why should not
Miss Robinson, who collects coins and differs from the accepted
authorities regarding the authenticity of certain of her specimens, tell
why and how and all about it? Why should not the member who is crazy about
begonias and the one who thinks she saw Uncle Hiram's ghost, and she who
has read and re-read George Meredith, seeing beauties in him that no one
else ever detected--why should not one and all give their fellows the
benefit of the really valuable special knowledge that they have acquired
through years of interested thinking and talking and doing?

But there will be trouble, as I have said. The thing, simple as it is,
would be too unaccustomed to comprehend. And then a real article in a real
cyclopædia by a real writer is Information with a big "I." My little
knowledge about making quince jelly, or darning stockings, or driving an
auto, or my thoughts about the intellectual differences between Dickens
and Thackeray, or my personal theories of conduct, or my reasons for
preferring hot-water heat to steam--these are all too trivial to mention;
is it possible that you want me to write them down on paper?

It may thus happen that when the committee opens its mail it may
find--nothing. What, then? Logically, I should be forced to say: Well, if
none of your members is interested enough in anything to have some
original information to tell about it, disband your club. What is the use
of it? Even three newsboys, when they meet on the street corner, begin at
once to interchange ideas. Where are yours?

Possibly this would be too drastic. It might be better to hold a meeting,
state the failure, and adjourn for another trial. It might be well to
repeat this several times, in the hope that the fact that absence of
original ideas means no proceedings might soak in and germinate. If this
does not work, it might be possible to fight the devil with fire, by going
back to the programme method so far as to assign definitely to members
subjects in which they are known to be deeply interested. This, in fact,
is the second method of treatment mentioned at the outset, namely, the
endeavour to secure immunity where the germ cannot be exterminated. We
shall probably never be able to rid the world of the _bacillus
tuberculosis_; the best we can do is to keep as clear of it as we can and
to strengthen our powers of resistance to it. So, if we cannot kill the
programme all at once, let us strive to make it innocuous and to minimise
its evil effects on its victims.

Let us suppose, now, that in one way or another, it is brought about that
every club member who reads a paper is reporting the result of some
personal experience in which her interest is vivid--some discovery,
acquisition, method, idea, criticism or appreciation that is the product
of her own life and of the particular, personal way in which she has lived
it.

What a result this will have on that woman's reading--on what she does
before she writes her paper and on what she goes through after it! If her
interest is as vivid as we assume it to be, she will not be content to
recount her own experiences without comparing them with those of others.
And after her paper has been read and the comment and criticism of other
interested members have been brought out--of some, perhaps, whose interest
she had never before suspected, then she will feel a fresh impulse to
search for new accounts and to devour them. There is no longer anything
perfunctory about the matter. She can no longer even trust the labour of
looking up her references to others. She becomes an investigator; she
feels something of the joy of those who add to the sum of human knowledge.

And lo! the problem of clubwomen's reading is solved! The wandering mind
is captured; the inane residuum is abolished by union with the rest to
form a normal, intelligent whole. No more idiotic questions, no more
cyclopædia-copying, no more wool-gathering programmes. Is it too much to
expect? Alas, we are but mortal!

I trust it has been made sufficiently clear that I think meanly neither of
the intellectual ability of women nor of the services of women's clubs.
The object of these papers is to give the former an opportunity to assert
itself, and the latter a chance to profit by the assertion. The woman's
club of the future should be a place where original ideas, fed and
directed by interested reading, are exchanged and discussed. Were I
writing of men's clubs, I should point out to them the same goal. And
then, perhaps, we may look forward to a time when a selected group of men
and women may come together and talk of things in which they both, as men
and women, are interested.

When this happens, I trust that in the discussion we shall not heed the
advice of some modern feminists and forget that we are as God made us. Why
should each man talk to a woman "as if she were another man"? I never
heard it advised that each woman should talk to each man "as if he were
another woman"; but I should resent it if I did. Why shut our eyes to the
truth? I trust that I have not been talking to the club-women "as if they
were men"; I am sure I have not meant to do so. They are not men; they
have their own ways, and those ways should be developed and encouraged. We
have had the psychology of race, of the crowd and of the criminal; where
is the investigator who has studied the Psychology of Woman? When she
(note the pronoun) has arrived, let us make her president of a woman's
club.

It is with diffidence that I have outlined any definite procedure,
because, after all, the precise manner in which the treatment should be
applied will depend, of course, on the club concerned. To prescribe for
you most effectively, your physician should be an intimate friend. He
should have known you from birth--better still, he should have cared for
your father and your grandfather before you. Otherwise, he prescribes for
an average man; and you may be very far from the average. The drug that he
administers to quiet your nerves may act on your heart and give you the
smothers--it might conceivably quiet you permanently. Then the doctor
would send to his medical journal a note on "A Curious Case of Umptiol
Poisoning," but you would still be dead, even if all his readers should
agree with him.

I have no desire to bring about casualties of this kind. Let those who
know and love each particular club devote themselves to the task of
applying my treatment to it in a way that will involve a minimum shock to
its nerves and a minimum amount of interference with its metabolic
processes. It will take time. Rome was not built in a day, and a
revolution in clubdom is not going to be accomplished over night.

I have prescribed simple remedies--too simple, I am convinced, to be
readily adopted. What could be simpler than to advise the extermination of
all germ diseases by killing off the germs? Any physician will tell you
that this method is the very acme of efficiency; yet, the germs are still
with us, and bid fair to spread suffering and death over our planet for
many a long year to come. So I am not sanguine that we shall be able all
at once to kill off the programmes. All that may be expected is that at
some distant day the simplicity and effectiveness of some plan of the sort
will begin to commend itself to clubwomen. If, then, some lover of the
older literature will point out the fact that, back in 1915, the gloomy
era when fighting hordes were spreading blood and carnage over the fair
face of Europe, an obscure and humble librarian, in the pages of THE
BOOKMAN, pointed out the way to sanity, I shall be well content.




BOOKS FOR TIRED EYES


The most distinctive thing about a book is the possibility that someone
may read it. Is this a truism? Evidently not; for the publishers, who
print books, and the libraries, which store and distribute them, have
never thought it worth their while to collect and record information
bearing on this possibility. In the publisher's or the bookseller's
advertising announcements, as well as on the catalogue cards stored in the
library's trays, the reader may ascertain when and where the book was
published, the number of pages, and whether it contains plates or maps;
but not a word of the size or style of type in which it is printed. Yet on
this depends the ability of the reader to use the book for the purpose for
which it was intended. The old-fashioned reader was a mild-mannered
gentleman. If he could not read his book because it was printed in
outrageously small type, he laid it aside with a sigh, or used a
magnifying lens, or persisted in his attempts with the naked eye until
eyestrain, with its attendant maladies, was the result. Lately however,
the libraries have been waking up, and their readers with them. The
utilitarian side of the work is pushed to the front; and the reader is by
no means disposed to accept what may be offered him, either in the content
of the book or its physical make-up. The modern library must adapt itself
to its users, and among other improvements must come an attempt to go as
far as possible in making books physiologically readable.

Unfortunately the library cannot control the output of books, and must
limit itself to selection. An experiment in such selection is now in
progress in the St. Louis Public Library. The visitor to that library will
find in its Open Shelf Room a section of shelving marked with the words
"Books in large type." To this section are directed all readers who have
found it difficult or painful to read the ordinary printed page but who do
not desire to wear magnifying lenses. It has not been easy to fill these
shelves, for books in large type are few, and hard to secure, despite the
fact that artists, printers, and oculists have for years been discussing
the proper size, form, and grouping of printed letters from their various
standpoints. Perhaps it is time to urge a new view--that of the public
librarian, anxious to please his clients and to present literature to them
in that physical form which is most easily assimilable and least harmful.

Tired eyes belong, for the most part, to those who have worked them
hardest; that is, to readers who have entered upon middle age or have
already passed through it. At this age we become conscious that the eye is
a delicate instrument--a fact which, however familiar to us in theory, has
previously been regarded with aloofness. Now it comes home to us. The
length of a sitting, the quality, quantity, and incidence of the light,
and above all, the arrangement of the printed page, become matters of
vital importance to us. A book with small print, or letters illegibly
grouped, or of unrecognizable shapes, becomes as impossible to us as if it
were printed in the Chinese character.

It is an unfortunate law of nature that injurious acts appear to us in
their true light only after the harm is done. The burnt child dreads the
fire after he has been burned--not before. So the fact that the
middle-aged man cannot read small, or crooked, or badly grouped type means
simply that the harmfulness of these things, which always existed for him,
has cumulated throughout a long tale of years until it has obtruded itself
upon him in the form of an inhibition. The books that are imperative for
the tired eyes of middle age, are equally necessary for those of
youth--did youth but know it. Curiously enough, we are accustomed to
begin, in teaching the young to read, with very legible type. When the
eyes grow stronger, we begin to maltreat them. So it is, also, with the
digestive organs, which we first coddle with pap, then treat awhile with
pork and cocktails, and then, perforce, entertain with pap of the second
and final period. What correspond, in the field of vision, to pork and
cocktails, are the vicious specimens of typography offered on all sides to
readers--in books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers--typography that
is slowly but surely ruining the eyesight of those that need it most.

Hitherto, the public librarian has been more concerned with the minds and
the morals of his clientele than with that physical organism without which
neither mind nor morals would be of much use. It would be easy to pick out
on the shelves of almost any public library books that are a physiological
scandal, printed in type that it is an outrage to place before any
self-respecting reader. I have seen copies of "Tom Jones" that I should be
willing to burn, as did a puritanical British library-board of newspaper
notoriety. My reasons, however, would be typographic, not moral, and I
might want to add a few copies of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "The
Saint's Everlasting Rest," without prejudice to the authors' share in
those works, which I admire and respect. Perhaps it is too much to ask for
complete typographical expurgation of our libraries. But, at least,
readers with tired eyes who do not yet wear, or care to wear, corrective
lenses, should be able to find, somewhere on the shelves, a collection of
works in relatively harmless print--large and black, clear in outline,
simple and distinctive in form, properly grouped and spaced.

The various attempts to standardize type-sizes and to adopt a suitable
notation for them have been limited hitherto to the sizes of the type-body
and bear only indirectly on the size of the actual letter. More or less
arbitrary names--such as minion, bourgeois, brevier, and nonpareil,--were
formerly used; but what is called the point-system is now practically
universal, although its unit, the "point," is not everywhere the same.
Roughly speaking, a point is one-seventy-second of an inch, so that in
three-point type, for example, the thickness of the type-body, from the
top to the bottom of the letter on its face, is one-twenty-fourth of an
inch. But on this type-body the face may be large or small--although of
course, it cannot be larger than the body,--and the size of the letters
called by precisely the same name in the point notation may vary within
pretty wide limits. There is no accepted notation for the size of the
letters themselves, and this fact tells, more eloquently than words, that
the present sizes of type are standardized and defined for compositors
only, not for readers, and still less for scientific students of the
effect upon the readers' eyes of different arrangements of the printed
page.

What seems to have been the first attempt to define sizes of type suitable
for school grades was made fifteen years ago by Mr Edward R. Shaw in his
"School Hygiene"; he advocates sizes from eighteen-point in the first year
to twelve-point for the fourth. "Principals, teachers, and school
superintendents," he says, "should possess a millimetre measure and a
magnifying glass, and should subject every book presented for their
examination to a test to determine whether the size of the letters and the
width of the leading are of such dimensions as will not prove injurious to
the eyes of children." To this list, librarians might be well added--not
to speak of authors, editors, and publishers. In a subsequent part of his
chapter on "Eyesight and Hearing," from which the above sentence is
quoted, appears a test of illumination suggested by "The Medical Record"
of Strasburg, which may serve as a "horrid example" in some such way as
did the drunken brother who accompanied the temperance lecturer. According
to this authority, if a pupil is unable to read diamond
type--four-and-one-half-point--"at twelve-inch distance and without
strain," the illumination is dangerously low. The adult who tries the
experiment will be inclined to conclude that whatever the illumination,
the proper place for the man who uses diamond type for any purpose is the
penitentiary.

The literature upon this general subject, such as it is, is concerned
largely with its relations with school hygiene. We are bound to give our
children a fair start in life, in conditions of vision as well as in other
respects, even if we are careless about ourselves. The topic of
"Conservation of Vision," in which, however, type-size played but a small
part, was given special attention at the Fourth International Congress of
School Hygiene, held in Buffalo in 1913. Investigations on the subject, so
far as they affect the child in school, are well summed up in the last
chapter of Huey's "Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading." In general, the
consensus of opinion of investigators seems to be that the most legible
type is that between eleven-point and fourteen-point. Opinion regarding
space between lines, due to "leading," is not quite so harmonious. Some
authorities think that it is better to increase the size of the letters;
and Huey asserts that an attempt to improve unduly small type by making
wide spaces between lines is a mistake.

As to the relative legibility of different type-faces, one of the most
exhaustive investigations was that made at Clark University by Miss
Barbara E. Roethlin, whose results were published in 1912. This study
considers questions of form, style, and grouping, independently of mere
size; and the conclusion is that legibility is a product of six factors,
of which size is one, the others being form, heaviness of face, width of
the margin around the letter, position in the letter-group, and shape and
size of adjoining letters. For "tired eyes" the size factor would appear
of overwhelming importance except where the other elements make the page
fantastically illegible. In Miss Roethlin's tables, based upon a
combination of the factors mentioned above, the maximum of legibility
almost always coincides with that of size. These experiments seem to have
influenced printers, whose organization in Boston has appointed a
committee to urge upon the Carnegie Institution the establishment of a
department of research to make scientific tests of printing-types in
regard to the comparative legibility and the possibility of improving some
of their forms. Their effort, so far, has met with no success; but the
funds at the disposal of this body could surely be put to no better use.

With regard to the improvement of legibility by alteration of form, it has
been recognized by experiments from the outset that the letters of our
alphabet, especially the small, or "lower-case" letters, are not equally
legible. Many proposals for modifying or changing them have been made,
some of them odd or repugnant. It has been suggested, for instance, that
the Greek lambda be substituted for our _l_, which in its present form is
easily confused with the dotted _i_. Other pairs of letters (_u_ and _n_,
_o_ and _e_, for example) are differentiated with difficulty. The
privilege of modifying alphabetic form is one that has been frequently
exercised. The origin of the German alphabet and our own, for instance, is
the same, and no lower-case letters in any form date further back than the
Middle Ages. There could be no well-founded objection to any change, in
the interests of legibility, that is not so far-reaching as to make the
whole alphabet look foreign and unfamiliar. It may be queried, however,
whether the lower-case alphabet had not better be reformed by abolishing
it altogether. There would appear to be no good reason for using two
alphabets, now one and now the other, according to arbitrary rules,
difficult to learn and hard to remember. That the general legibility of
books would benefit by doing away with this mediaeval excrescence appears
to admit of no doubt, although the proposal may seem somewhat startling to
the general reader.

In 1911, a committee was appointed by the British Association for the
Advancement of Science "to inquire into the influence of school-books upon
eyesight." This committee's report dwells on the fact that the child's eye
is still in process of development and needs larger type than the fully
developed eye of the adult. In making its recommendation for the
standardization of school-book type, which it considers the solution of
the difficulty, the committee emphasizes the fact that forms and sizes
most legible for isolated letters are not necessarily so for the groups
that need to be quickly recognized by the trained reader. It dwells upon
the importance of unglazed paper, flexible sewing, clear, bold
illustrations, black ink, and true alignment. Condensed or compressed
letters are condemned, as are long serifs and hair strokes. On the other
hand, very heavy-faced type is almost as objectionable as that with the
fine lines, the ideal being a proper balancing of whites and blacks in
each letter and group. The size of the type face, as we might expect, is
pronounced by the committee "the most important factor in the influence of
books upon vision"; it describes its recommended sizes in millimetres--a
refinement which, for the purposes of this article, need not be insisted
upon. Briefly, the sizes run from thirty-point, for seven-year-old
children, to ten-point or eleven-point, for persons more than twelve years
old. Except as an inference from this last recommendation, the committee,
of course, does not exceed its province by treating of type-sizes for
adults; yet it would seem that it considers ten-point as the smallest size
fit for anyone, however good his sight. This would bar much of our
existing reading matter.

A writer whose efforts in behalf of sane typography have had practical
results is Professor Koopman, librarian of Brown University, whose plea
has been addressed chiefly to printers. Professor Koopman dwells
particularly on the influence of short lines on legibility. The eye must
jump from the end of each line back to the beginning of the next, and this
jump is shorter and less fatiguing with the shorter line, though it must
be oftener performed. Owing largely to his demonstration, "The Printing
Art," a trade magazine published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has changed
its make-up from a one-column to a two-column page. It should be noted,
however, that a uniform, standard length of line is even more to be
desired than a short one. When the eye has become accustomed to one length
for its linear leaps, these leaps can be performed with relative ease and
can be taken care of subconsciously. When the lengths vary capriciously
from one book, or magazine, to another, or even from one page to another,
as they so often do, the effort to get accustomed to the new length is
more tiring than we realize. Probably this factor, next to the size of
type, is most effective in tiring the middle-aged eye, and in keeping it
tired. The opinion may be ventured that the reason for our continued
toleration of the small type used in the daily newspapers is that their
columns are narrow, and still more, that these are everywhere of
practically uniform width.

The indifference of publishers to the important feature of the physical
make-up of books appears from the fact that in not a single case is it
included among the descriptive items in their catalogue entries. Libraries
are in precisely the same class of offenders. A reader or a possible
purchaser of books is supposed to be interested in the fact that a book is
published in Boston, has four hundred and thirty-two pages, and is
illustrated, but not at all in its legibility. Neither publishers nor
libraries have any way of getting information on the subject, except by
going to the books themselves. Occasionally a remainder-catalogue,
containing bargains whose charms it is desired to set forth with unusual
detail, states that a certain book is in "large type," or even in "fine,
large type," but these words are nowhere defined, and the purchaser cannot
depend on their accuracy. An edition of Scott, recently advertised
extensively as in "large, clear type," proved on examination to be printed
in ten-point.

In gathering the large-type collection for the St. Louis Library
fourteen-point was decided upon as the standard, which means, of course,
types with a face somewhere between the smallest size that is usually
found on a fourteen-point body, even if actually on a smaller body, and
the largest that this can carry, even if on a larger body. The latter is
unusually large, but it would not do to place the standard below
fourteen-point, because that would lower the minimum, which is none too
large as it is. The first effort was to collect such large-type books,
already in the library, as would be likely to interest the general reader.
In the collection of nearly 400,000 volumes, it was found by diligent
search that only 150 would answer this description. Most octavo volumes of
travel are in large type, but only a selected number of these was placed
in the collection to avoid overloading it with this particular class. This
statement applies also to some other classes, and to certain types of
books, such as some government reports and some scientific monographs,
which have no representatives in the group. The next step was to
supplement the collection by purchase. All available publishers'
catalogues were examined, but after a period of twelve months it was found
possible to spend only $65.00 in the purchase of 120 additional books. A
circular letter was then sent to ninety-two publishers, explaining the
purpose of the collection and asking for information regarding books in
fourteen-point type, or larger, issued by them. To these there were
received sixty-three answers. In twenty-nine instances, no books in type
of this size were issued by the recipients of the circulars. In six cases,
the answer included brief lists of from two to twelve titles of large-type
books; and in several other cases, the publishers stated that the labor of
ascertaining which of their publications are in large type would be
prohibitive, as it would involve actual inspection of each and every
volume on their lists. In two instances, however, after a second letter,
explaining further the aims of the collection, publishers promised to
undertake the work. The final result has been that the Library now has
over four hundred volumes in the collection. This is surely not an
imposing number, but it appears to represent the available resources of a
country in which 1,000 publishers are annually issuing 11,000 volumes--to
say nothing of the British and Continental output. In the list of the
collection and in the entries, the size of the type, the leading, and the
size of the book itself are to be distinctly stated. The last-mentioned
item is necessary because the use of large type sometimes involves a heavy
volume, awkward to hold in the hand. The collection for adults in the St.
Louis Library, as it now exists, may be divided into the following
classes, according to the reasons that seem to have prompted the use of
large type:

1. Large books printed on a somewhat generous scale and intended to sell
at a high price, the size of the type being merely incidental to this
plan. These include books of travel, history, or biography in several
volumes, somewhat high-priced sets of standard authors, and books intended
for gifts.

2. Books containing so little material that large type, thick paper, and
wide margins were necessary to make a volume easy to handle and use. These
include many short stories of magazine length, which for some inscrutable
reason are now often issued in separate form.

3. Books printed in large type for aesthetic reasons. These are few,
beauty and artistic form being apparently linked in some way with
illegibility by many printers, no matter what the size of the type-face.

The large-type collection is used, not only by elderly persons, but also
in greater number by young persons whose oculists forbid them to read fine
print, or who do not desire to wear glasses. The absence of a wide range
in the collection drives others away to books that are, doubtless, in many
cases bad for their eyes. Some books that have not been popular in the
general collection have done well here, while old favorites have not been
taken out. Such facts as these mean little with so limited a collection.
Until readers awake to the dangers of small print and the comfort of large
type there will not be sufficient pressure on our publishers to induce
them to put forth more books suitable for tired eyes. It is probably too
much to expect that the trade itself will try to push literature whose
printed form obeys the rules of ocular hygiene. All that we can reasonably
ask is that type-size shall be reported on in catalogues, so that those
who want books in large type may know what is obtainable and where to go
for it.

It has often been noted that physicians are the only class of professional
men whose activities, if properly carried on, tend directly to make the
profession unnecessary. Medicine tends more and more to be preventive
rather than curative. We must therefore look to the oculists to take the
first steps towards lessening the number of their prospective patients by
inculcating rational notions about the effects of the printed page on the
eye. Teachers, librarians, parents, the press--all can do their part. And
when a demand for larger print has thus been created the trade will
respond. Meanwhile, libraries should be unremitting in their efforts to
ascertain what material in large type already exists, to collect it, and
to call attention to it in every legitimate way.




THE MAGIC CASEMENT[16]

[16] Read before the Town and Gown Club, St. Louis.


Anyone who talks or writes about the "movies" is likely to be
misunderstood. There is little to be said now about the moving picture as
a moving picture, unless one wants to discuss its optics or mechanics. The
time is past when anyone went to see a moving picture as a curiosity. It
was once the eighth wonder of the world; it long ago abdicated that
position to join its dispossessed brothers the telephone, the X-ray, the
wireless telegraph and the phonograph. What we now go to see is not the
moving picture, but what the moving picture shows us; it is no more than a
window through which we gaze--the poet's "magic casement" opening
(sometimes) "on the foam of perilous seas." We may no more praise or
condemn the moving picture for what it shows us than we may praise or
condemn a proscenium arch or the glass in a show window.

The critic who thinks that the movies are lowering our tastes, or doing
anything else objectionable, as well as he who thinks they are educating
the masses, is not of the opinion that the moving pictures are doing these
things because they show moving objects on a screen, but because of the
character of what is photographed for such exhibition.

Thoughts on the movies, therefore, must be rather thoughts on things that
are currently shown us by means of the movies; thoughts also on some of
the things that we might see and do not. I have compared the screen above
to a proscenium arch and a show window, but both of these are selective:
the screen is as broad as the world. It is especially adapted to show
realities; through it one may see the coast of Dalmatia as viewed from a
steamer, the habits of animals in the African jungle, or the play of
emotion on the faces of an audience at a ball game in Philadelphia. I am
pleased to see that more and more of these interesting realities are shown
daily in the movie theatres. There has been a determined effort to make
them unpopular by calling them "educational," but they seem likely to
outlive it. One is educated, of course, by everything that he sees or
does, but why rub it in? The boy who thoroughly likes to go sailing will
get more out of it than he who goes because he thinks it will be "an
educational experience." As one who goes to the movies I confess that I
enjoy its realities. Probably they educate me, and I take that with due
meekness. Some of these realities I enjoy because they are unfamiliar,
like the boiling of the lava lake in the Hawaiian craters and the changing
crowds in the streets of Manila; some because they are familiar, like a
college foot-ball game or the movement of vessels in the North River at
New York.

I like the realities, too, in the dramatic performances that still occupy
and probably will continue to occupy, most of the time at a movie theatre.
Here I come into conflict with the producer. Like every other adapter he
can not cut loose from the old when he essays the new. We no longer wear
swords, but we still carry the buttons for the sword belt, and it is only
recently that semi-tropic Americans gave up the dress of north-temperate
Europe. So the movie producer can not forget the theatre. Now the theatre
has some advantages that the movie can never attain--notably the use of
speech. The movie, on the other hand, has unlimited freedom of scene and
the use of real backgrounds. We do not object to a certain amount of what
we call "staginess" on the stage--it is a part of its art; as the pigment
is part of that of the painter. We are surrounded by symbols; we are not
surprised that costume, gesture and voice are also symbolic instead of
purely natural. But in the moving picture play it is, or should be,
different. The costume and make-up, the posture and gesture, that seem
appropriate in front of a painted house or tree on a back-drop, become so
out-of-place as to be repulsive when one sees them in front of a real
house and real trees, branches moving in the wind, running water--all the
familiar accompaniments of nature. The movie producers, being unable to
get away from their stage experience, are failing to grasp their
opportunity. Instead of creating a drama of reality to correspond with the
real environment that only the movie can offer, they are abandoning the
unique advantages of that environment, to a large degree. They build fake
cities, they set all their interiors in fake studio rooms, where
everything is imitation; even when they let us see a bit of outdoors, it
is not what it pretends to be. We have all seen, on the screen, bluffs 200
feet high on the coast of Virginia and palm trees growing in the borough
of the Bronx. And they hire stage actors to interpret the stagiest of
stage plots in as stagy a way as they know how. I am taking the movie
seriously because I like it and because I see that I share that liking
with a vast throng of persons with whom it is probably the only thing I
have in common--persons separated from me by differences of training and
education that would seem to make a common ground of any kind well-nigh
impossible. With some persons the fact that the movie is democratic puts
it outside the pale at once. Nothing, in their estimation, is worth
discussing unless appreciation of it is limited to the few. Their attitude
is that of the mother who said to the nurse: "Go and see what baby is
doing, and tell him he musn't." "Let us," they say "find out what people
like, and then try to make them like something else." To such I have
nothing to say. We ought rather, I believe, to find out the kind of thing
that people like and then do our best to see that they get it in the best
quality--that it is used in every way possible to pull them out of the
mud, instead of rubbing their noses further in.

On the other hand, some capable critics, like Mr. Walter Pritchard Eaton,
decry the movies because they are undemocratic--because they are offering
a form of entertainment appealing only to the uneducated and thus
segregating them from the educated, who presumably all attend the regular
theatre, sitting in the parquet at two dollars per. One wonders whether
Mr. Eaton has attended a moving-picture theatre since 1903. I believe the
movie to be by all odds the most democratic form of intellectual (by which
I mean non-physical) entertainment ever offered; and I base my belief on
wide observation of audiences in theatres of many different grades. Now
this democracy shows itself not only in the composition of audiences but
in their manifestations of approval. I do not mean that everyone in an
audience always likes the same thing. Some outrageous "slap-stick" comedy
rejoices one and offends another. A particularly foolish plot may satisfy
in one place while it bores in another. But everywhere I find one thing
that appeals to everybody--realism. Just as soon as there appears on the
screen something that does not know how to pose and is forced by nature to
be natural--an animal or a young child, for instance--there are immediate
manifestations of interest and delight.

The least "stagy" actors are almost always favorites. Mary Pickford stands
at the head. There is not an ounce of staginess in her make-up. She was
never particularly successful on the stage. Some of her work seems to me
ideal acting for the screen--simple, appealing, absolutely true. Of course
she is not always at her best.

To the stage illusions that depend on costume and make-up, the screen is
particularly unfriendly. Especially in the "close-ups" the effect is
similar to that which one would have if he were standing close to the
actor looking directly into his face. It is useless to depend on ordinary
make-up under these circumstances. Either it should be of the description
used by Sherlock Holmes and other celebrated detectives (we rely on
hearsay) which deceives the very elect at close quarters, or else the
producer must choose for his characters those that naturally "look the
parts." In particular, the lady who, although long past forty, continues
to play _ingenue_ parts and "gets away with it" on the stage, must get
away _from_ it, when it comes to the screen. The "close up" tells the sad
story at once. The part of a sixteen-year-old girl must be played by a
real one. Another concession to realism, you see. And what is true of
persons is true of their environment. I have already registered my
disapproval of the "Universal City" type of production. It is almost as
easy for the expert to pick out the fake Russian village or the pasteboard
Virginia court-house as it is for him to spot the wrinkles in the
countenance of the school girl who left school in 1892. Next to a fake
environment the patchwork scene enrages one--the railway that is
double-track with 90-pound rails in one scene and single-track with
streaks of rust in the next; the train that is hauled in quick succession
by locomotives of the Mogul type, the Atlantic and the wood-burning
vintage of 1868. There is here an impudent assumption in the producer, of
a lack of intelligence in his audience, that is quite maddening. The same
lack of correspondence appears between different parts of the same street,
and between the outside and inside of houses. I am told by friends that I
am quite unreasonable in the extent to which I carry my demands for
realism in the movies. "What would you have?" they ask. I would have a
producing company that should advertise, "We have no studio" and use only
real backgrounds--the actual localities represented. "Do you mean to tell
me," my friend goes on, "that you would carry your company to Spain
whenever the scene of their play is laid in that country? The expense
would be prohibitive." I most certainly should not, and this because of
the very realism that I am advocating. Plays laid in Spain should be acted
not only in Spain but by Spaniards. The most objectionable kind of fake is
that in which Americans are made to do duty for Spaniards, Hindus or
Japanese when their appearance, action and bearing clearly indicate that
they were born and brought up in Skowhegan, Maine or Crawfordsville,
Indiana. I have seen Mary Pickford in "Madame Butterfly", and I testify
sadly that not even she can succeed here. No; if we want Spanish plays let
us use those made on Spanish soil. Let us have free interchange of films
between all film-producing countries. All the change required would be
translating the captions, or better still, plays might be produced that
require no captions. This might mean the total reorganization of the
movie-play business in this country--a revolution which I should view with
equanimity. Speaking of captions, here again the average producer appears
to agree with Walter Pritchard Eaton that he is catering only to the
uneducated. The writers of most captions seem, indeed, to have abandoned
formal instruction in the primary school. Why should not a movie caption
be good literature? Some of them are. The Cabiria captions were fine:
though I do not admire that masterpiece. I am told that D'Annunzio
composed them with care, and equal care was evidently used in the
translation. The captions of the George Ade fables are uniformly good, and
there are other notable exceptions. Other places where knowledge of
language is required are inadequately taken care of. Letters from eminent
persons make one want to hide under the chairs. These persons usually sign
themselves "Duke of Gandolfo" or "Secretary of State Smith." Are grammar
school graduates difficult to get, or high-priced? I beg you to observe
that here again lack of realism is my objection.

But divers friends interpose the remark that the movies are already too
realistic. "They leave nothing to the imagination." If this were so, it
were a grievous fault--at any rate in so far as the moving-picture play
aims at being an art-form. All good art leaves something to the
imagination. As a matter of fact, however, the movie is the exact
complement of the spoken play as read from a book. Here we have the words
in full, the scene and action being left to the imagination except as
briefly sketched in the stage direction. In the movie we have scene and
action in full, the words being left to the imagination except as briefly
indicated in the captions. Where captions are very full the form may
perhaps be said to be complementary to the novel, where besides the words
we are given a written description of scene and action that is often full
of detail. The movie leaves just as much to the imagination as the novel,
but what is so left is different in the two cases. Do I think that
everyone in a movie audience makes use of his privilege to imagine what
the actors are saying? No; neither does the novel-reader always image the
scene and action. This does not depend on ignorance or the reverse, but on
imaging power. Exceptional visual and auditive imaging power are rarely
present in the same individual. I happen to have the former. I
automatically see everything of which I read in a novel, and when the
descriptions are not detailed, this gets me into trouble. On a second
reading my imaged background may be different and when the earlier one
asserts itself there is a conflict that I can compare only to hearing two
tunes played at once. Persons having already good visual imaging power
should develop their auditive imaging power by going to the movies and
hearing what the actors say; these with deficient visual imagery should
read novels and see the scenery. But to say that the movies allow no scope
for the imagination is absurd. As I said at the outset, the movie play is
just a play seen through the medium of a moving picture. It is like seeing
a drama near enough to note the slightest play of feature and at the same
time so far away that the actors can not be heard--somewhat like seeing a
distant play through a fine telescope. The action should therefore differ
in no respect from what would be proper if the words were intended to be
heard. Doubtless this imposes a special duty upon both the author of the
scenario and the producer, and they do not always respond to it. Action is
introduced that fails to be intelligible without the words, and to clear
it up the actors are made to use pantomime. Pantomime is an interesting
and valuable form of dramatic art, but it is essentially symbolic and
stagy and has, I believe, no place in the moving picture play as we have
developed it. If owing to the faulty construction of the play, or a lack
of skill on the part of producer or actors, all sorts of gestures and
grimaces become necessary that would not be required if the words were
heard, the production can not be considered good. Sometimes, of course,
words are _seen_; though not heard. The story of the deaf mutes who read
the lips of the movie actors, and detected remarks not at all in
consonance with the action of the play, is doubtless familiar. It crops up
in various places and is as ubiquitous as Washington's Headquarters. It is
good enough to be true, but I have never run it to earth yet. Even those
of us who are not deaf-mutes, however, may detect an exclamation now and
then and it gives great force to the action, though I doubt whether it is
quite legitimate in a purely picture-play.

I beg leave to doubt whether realism is fostered by a method of production
said to be in vogue among first rate producers; namely keeping actors in
ignorance of the play and directing the action as it goes on.

"Come in now, Mr. Smith; sit in that chair; cross your legs; light a
cigar; register perplexity; you hear a sound; jump to your feet"--and so
on. This may save the producer trouble, but it reduces the actors to
marionettes; it is not thus that masterpieces are turned out.

Is there any chance of a movie masterpiece, anyway? Yes, but not in the
direction that most producers see it. What Vachell Lindsay calls
"Splendor" in the movies is an interesting and striking feature of
them--the moving of masses of people amid great architectural
construction--sieges, triumphs, battles, mobs--but all this is akin to
scenery. Its movements are like those of the trees or the surf. One can
not make a play entirely of scenery, though the contrary seems to be the
view of some managers, even on the stage of the regular theatre. So far,
the individual acting and plot construction in the great spectacular
movies has been poor. It was notably so, it seems to me in the Birth of a
Nation and not much better in Cabiria. Judith of Bethulia (after T.B.
Aldrich) is the best acted "splendor" play that I have seen. Masterpieces
are coming not through spending millions on supes, and "real" temples, and
forts; but rather by writing a scenario particularly adapted to
film-production, hiring and training actors that know how to act for the
camera, preferably those without bad stage habits to unlearn, cutting out
all unreal scenery, costume and make-up and keeping everything as simple
and as close to the actual as possible. The best movie play I ever saw was
in a ten-cent theatre in St. Louis. It was a dramatization of Frank
Norris's "McTeague." I have never seen it advertised anywhere, and I never
heard of the actors, before or since. But most of it was fine, sincere
work, and seeing it made me feel that there is a future for the movie
play.

One trouble is that up to date, neither producers nor actors nor the most
intelligent and best educated part of the audience take the movies
seriously. Here is one of the marvels of modern times; something that has
captured the public as it never was captured before. And yet most of us
look at it as a huge joke, or as something intended to entertain the
populace, at which we, too are graciously pleased to be amused. It might
mend matters if we could have every day in some reputable paper a column
of readable serious stuff about the current movie plays--real criticism,
not simply the producer's "blurb."

Possibly, too, a partnership between the legitimate stage and the movie