Heggie was by all odds the outstanding figure in Ian Hay's pleasant farce-comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky. He was cast as Samuel Stillbottle, a bailiff's man, made up like Fields, the tramp juggler, and called upon to perform all the antics dear to low comedy. He did them with gusto, but there was something more. Heggie is almost the only actor we know who can trip over a door sill and keep his performance in two dimensions. The playwright may spread him into as broad a character as you please, but he cannot flatten him. Depth remains. When Heggie sets all the dishes to crashing or guzzles stage whisky till he chokes we laugh first and then pause to wonder whether or not the soul of man is immortal.
All this should be a part of the best clowning. The great clown is for us all the symbol of man's defiance to the great spaces and the wide darkness. Perhaps we die to-morrow, but to-day we are fellows of infinite jest. No matter what happens, we have laughed. To see O. P. Heggie is to be reminded of all the clowns that have ever been and are to come in the eternal succession of the brave and brazen.
Nothing in the world dies quite as completely as an actor and the greater the actor the more terrifying becomes the sudden transition from radiance to darkness. One day he is there with all his moods and complexities and curious glints of this and that, and the next day there is nothing left but a few wigs and costumes; perhaps a volume of memoirs, and a scrapbook of clippings in which we learn that the dead player was "majestic in presence" that "the poise of his head was stag-like" that he had "a great voice which boomed like a bell," that he was "regal, subtle, pathetic," and that "every one who was ever associated with him loved and respected him."
Ask some veteran theatergoer "What was Booth like as Hamlet?" and he will say "Oh, he was wonderful." Perhaps the face of the old theatergoer will grow animated and Booth may live again for a moment in his mind, but we who have never seen Booth will never know anything about him. Nobody can recreate and explain the art of a dead actor to the next generation. Even men who do tricks and true magic with words are not adept enough to set down any lasting portrait of an actor on the wing.
A good deal of whitewash has flowed past the fence, but Tom Sawyer's trick still holds good. Even to-day it is possible to get hard work done by making people think of it as a privilege. In looking over an autumn catalogue, we came across a series of books for young persons in which we were struck by the titles, When Mother Lets Us Help and When Mother Lets Us Cook. We trust that the series will be extended along these lines. If so, we intend to use as birthday gifts for H. 3rd, When Father Lets Me Stoke the Furnace, When Father Lets Me Shine His Shoes, and When Father Lets Me Lend Him Money.
A great number of persons for whose opinions we have the highest respect have assured us that Woman, by Magdeleine Marx, is an absorbing and well-written novel. We have done our best but we can't go through. At the last attempt, under whip and spur, we reached page 46 and there we found, "A gentle pearl-gray breeze was stirring the curtains." We can go no further. There is nothing for us to do but lie down and wait for the St. Bernards.