BELGIAN DRAMATIST CRITICIZES NEW YORK.
Money, Bustle, and Noise Are the Principal
Things Named as Characteristic
of Our Young Nation.
Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist and mystic philosopher, is by no means dull in his appreciation of practical conditions. People who know him say that he is not in the least lackadaisical or spiritually remote, but is simple and frank and full of interest in every-day occurrences. A short time ago he was asked to express his opinion of America. He replied—to quote from the Theater Magazine:
I should be afraid to live in a city like New York. I understand that money, bustle, and noise are its chief characteristics. Money is useful, of course, but it is not everything. Bustle and noise, also, are necessary adjuncts of human industry. But they do not add to man's comfort nor satisfy his soul's cravings.
America is too young a nation to seek the beautiful. That may come when you Americans grow weary of being rich. Then you will, as a nation, cultivate art and letters, and—who knows?—one day you will surpass the Old World in the splendor of your buildings, the genius of your authors. You are a great people, but your highest powers are still slumbering.
At present you are too busily occupied in assimilating the foreigner, too busily engaged in affairs purely material, to leave either time or taste for either the beautiful or the occult. When America does take to beautifying her own home she will astonish the world.
WHAT "PUNCH" HAS MEANT TO ENGLAND.
London's Famous Funny Paper is Really
Funny to Those Who Know How
to Appreciate Its Jokes.
Sir Francis C. Burnand has resigned the editorship of London Punch after a service of twenty-three years. It is hard to think of him as old, but, being in his seventieth year, doubtless he had begun to find the cares of his position somewhat irksome.
Eminent as was his fitness for the editorship he held so long, he started out in life with no notion of becoming a humorist. Amateur dramatic performances took much of his time at Cambridge. After leaving the university, he became a barrister. Converted to the Roman church, he studied for the priesthood, but abandoned this prospective future in order to devote himself to the stage. Though he did not become an actor, he wrote many stage pieces—plays, librettos, etc.; at the same time he was writing jokes for the humorous papers, and when he was twenty-five years of age he became a regular contributor to Punch. Says the New York Evening Post: