Critics--what a queer lot!--are generally foes to art--from Dr. Johnson down to those of the present day. Seldom sponsors, always antagonistic, jealous and even venomous, they are eager to tear down citadels of honest thought and houses of worthy purpose! They remain hostile until the continued success of their victim compels a truce. And how cravenly they acknowledge defeat! Like the shot coyote they will only fight when wounded. The reviewer of a prize fight will comment upon a picture; criticize sculpture, literature, acting! Why should the average critic know anything about acting when his horizon does not extend beyond the ill-ventilated room containing his trunk filled with the manuscripts which he has not succeeded in having produced? Conscious of the revenues of the successful playwrights of the day he criticizes with venom in his drab heart and vitriol in his ink-bottle! No wonder he enjoys storming the forts of prosperity! But what gets on my nerves is the attention given some of these penny-a-liners by the average American manager-producer who cull the complimentary expressions of these incompetents and print them conspicuously upon their posters. To add further insult to the honest player most of the yellow journals photograph these critics, heading the columns of their uninstructive matter with their faces! Shades of Lamb, Hazlitt, and George Henry Lewes! I wonder how many readers cut out the pictures of those little cherubs, "Alan Dale" and "Vance" Thompson, and paste them in their scrap books? I utilized their pictures beautifying (!) two cuspidors in my home--and they are always in constant use! My antagonism to the critics is not sweeping. I have the most supreme respect for the memory of such critics as the late Mr. Clapp of Boston, Mr. McPhelim of Chicago, Clement Scott and Joseph Knight of London, Mr. Wiliard of Providence, "Brick" Pomeroy, Joseph Bradford and Frank Hatton. I have the same regard for some of the living critics including, the Hon. Henry Watterson, Arthur Warren, James O'Donnell Bennett, Philip Hale, Blakely Hall, Amy Leslie, George Goodale, Ashton Stevens, Lyman P. Glover, Lawrence Reamer, Elwyn Barron, Stilson Hutchins, Marion Reedy and many others. These gentlemen know whereof they write and never allow personalities to enter their critical views. But for those effeminate, puerile, sycophantic, dogmatic parasites who live from hand to mouth, who bite the hands that feed them, whose exposed palms are always in evidence (to receive the stipends that warp their supposed knowledge of the art)--I have an equal amount of disgust. "Alan Dale" whose real name is Cohen called on me some years ago in Paris with instructions from his master, Mr. Hearst, to interview me.