a week, while in London ten thousand dollars a week is enormous, and that the American public has a preference for its own dramatists, I have little fear for the artistic importance of the drama of the future in America.  And from the discrepancy between my own observations and the observations of a reliable European critic in New York only five years ago, I should imagine that appreciable progress had already been made, though I will not pretend that I was much impressed by the achievements up to date, either of playwrights, actors, or audiences.  A huge popular institution, however, such as the American theatrical system, is always interesting to the amateur of human nature.

The first thing noted by the curious stranger in American theaters is that American theatrical architects have made a great discovery—­namely, that every member of the audience goes to the play with a desire to be able to see and hear what passes on the stage.  This happy American discovery has not yet announced itself in Europe, where in almost every theater seats are impudently sold, and idiotically bought, from which it is impossible to see and hear what passes on the stage. (A remarkable continent, Europe!) Apart from this most important point, American theaters are not, either without or within, very attractive.  The auditoriums, to a European, have a somewhat dingy air.  Which air is no doubt partly due to the non-existence of a rule in favor of evening dress (never again shall I gird against the rule in Europe!), but it is due also to the oddly inefficient illumination during the entr’actes, and to the unsatisfactory schemes of decoration.

The interior of a theater ought to be magnificent, suggesting pleasure, luxury, and richness; it ought to create an illusion of rather riotous grandeur.  The rare architects who have understood this seem to have lost their heads about it, with such wild and capricious results as the new opera-house in Philadelphia.  I could not restrain my surprise that the inhabitants of the Quaker City had not arisen with pickaxes and razed this architectural extravaganza to the ground.  But Philadelphia is a city startlingly unlike its European reputation.  Throughout my too-brief sojourn in it I did not cease to marvel at its liveliness.  I heard more picturesque and pyrotechnic wit at one luncheon in Philadelphia than at any two repasts outside it.  The spacious gaiety and lavishness of its marts enchanted me.  It must have a pretty weakness for the most costly old books and manuscripts.  I never was nearer breaking the Sixth Commandment than in one of its homes, where the Countess of Pembroke’s own copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia—­a unique and utterly un-Quakerish treasure—­was laid trustfully in my hands by the regretted and charming Harry Widener.