"It is the public who are the critics, not the writers on the press. There is not a man in pit or gallery who is not as good a judge of the merits of a play as the best professional dramatic critic in the country." An Englishman who had just returned from a visit to America wrote: "Three weeks ago I was present in a New York theatre on the first production of a new play. It was the most wretched trash imaginable, and was an unmitigated and deserved failure. In comparison with the play I witnessed then, _A Heart of Gold_, at the first representation of which I was present, shines forth a most worthy, intellectual, and praiseworthy effort. It is the work of an earnest, capable playwright, who deserves every encouragement, even when he does not come up to the requirements of the modern play-goer. I will, however, go so far as to place the two plays on a level, pronouncing them, for the purpose of my illustration, as equal in merit--which is not the case, for one is a gem, the other the vilest paste. Both plays were condemned. Note, now, the methods of condemnation. In New York, when the curtain fell, the audience very quietly left the theatre; there was no applause; there were no shrieks and howls; no brutal cries for 'Author,' to serve a cruel end. There was something almost funereal in the manner of the New York audience as they filed slowly out of the house; they seemed to tread more softly than usual; they spoke in lower tones. This was their method of damning the play, and I commend it to the attention of London play-goers as incomparably more decent and respectable than that which they adopt to break an author's heart. There are certain of our national customs which will bear reform; this undoubtedly is one. As I pen these lines I see the two assemblages; one conducting itself with reason and dignity, as becomes rational men and women; the other conducting itself with unreasoning and indefensible cruelty, as becomes a lower order of being." A morning paper of high repute summed up the matter thus: