The drinking song—every opera has one—we changed just a little. Instead of tin goblets each singer had a box of Perkins's Pink Pellets; and, as they sang, they touched boxes with each other, and swallowed the Pink Pellets. It was easy to change the song from
“Drain the red wine-cup—
Each good fellow knows
The jolly red wine-cup
Will cure all his woes”
to the far more moral and edifying verse,—
“Eat the Pink Pellet,
For every one knows
That Perkins's Pink Pellets
Will cure all his woes.”
When Perkins had finished touching up that opera, it was not such an every-day opera as it had been. He put some life into it.
I asked him if he didn't think he had given it a rather commercial atmosphere by introducing the Porous Plaster and the Pink Pellets, but he only smiled knowingly.
“Wait!” he said, “wait a week. Wait until Perkins circulates himself around town. Why should the drama be out of date? Why avoid all interest? Why not have the opera teem with the life of the day? Why not?” He laid one leg gently over the arm of his chair and tilted his hat back on his head.
“Literature, art, drama,” he said, “the phonographs of civilization. Where is the brain of the world? In literature, art, and the drama. These three touch the heartstrings; these three picture mankind; these three teach us. They move the world.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good!” exclaimed Perkins. “But why is the drama weak? Why no more Shakespeares? Why no more Molières? Because the real life-blood of to-day isn't in the drama. What is the life-blood of to-day?”