We shall have to be grateful beyond expression for the beautiful art of May Wirth, and devote less enthusiasm to asking of when and how it came about. To have established one's art at the perfect point in one's girlhood, is it not achievement, is it not genius itself? Charming little May Wirth, first equestrienne of the world, I congratulate you for your beautiful presentation, for the excellence of its technique, and for the grace and fascination contained therein. Triumph in youth, victory in the heroic period of life, that surely is sufficient. Let the bays fall upon her young head gleefully, for she earned them with patience, devotion, intelligence, and very hard labours. Salutations, little lady of the white horse! How charming, how simple she was, the little equestrienne as she rode away from the door of the huge theatre, in her pale blue touring car. "I love the audiences here in this great theatre, but O, I love the circus so much more!" These were the sentiments of the little performer as she rode away. She is now touring, performing under the huge canvases in the open areas of the middle West, and the little traveling circus is on its way over the mountains. Fascinating people, and a fascinating life for whom there is not, and probably never will be, a written history; the story of whose origin lies almost as buried as that of the primitive peoples. Charming rovers, content with life near to the bright sky, charming people, for whom life is but one long day in which to make beautiful their bodies, and make joyful the eyes of those who love to look at them! JOHN BARRYMORE IN PETER IBBETSON The vicissitudes of the young boy along the vague, precarious way, the longing to find the reality of the dream--the heart that knew him best--a study in sentimentality, the pathetic wanderings of a "little boy lost" in the dream of childhood, and the "little boy found" in the arms of his loved mother, with all those touches that are painful and all that are exquisite and poignant in their beauty--such is the picture presented by John Barrymore, as nearly perfect as any artist can be, in "Peter Ibbetson." Certainly it is as finished a creation in its sense of form, and of color, replete with a finesse of rare loveliness, as gratifying a performance, to my notion, as has been seen on our stage for many years. Perhaps if the author, recalling vain pasts, could realize the scum of saccharinity in which the play is utterly submerged, and that it struggles with great difficulty to survive the nesselrodelike sweetness with which it is surfeited, he would recognize the real distinction that Barrymore lends to a role so clogged by the honeyed sentimentality covering most of the scenes. Barrymore gives us that "quickened sense" of the life of the young man, a portrayal which takes the eye by "its fine edge of light," a portrayal clear and cool, elevated to a fine loftiness in his rendering.