But that ain't what I'm sayin' to you now! You leave that stuck-up little Jane alone! They's plenty of girls that's pretty in the world-- You leave that dirty oilcan's daughter be. Ten years ago she used to run around And rush the can for me and other folks. Now she's a real swell lady! Damn her eyes, And Bill's, and them there pussy-footin' fish! The world is, crazy! And I'm goin' nuts! High-tonin' me! You hear me? If I catch you Foolin' around that girl, I kick you out, So fast you won't know what has ever hit you! A bootleg's daughter! Hell! AND THE PLAYWRIGHT [Illustration: Alexander Woollcott rescuing the Playwright from the awful shears of the Censor.] ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT Every American playwright goes about his work these days oppressed by a foreboding. He suspects that before long a censor is going to materialize out of thin air to take stern and morose charge of the American theatre. It is true that no statutory precipitation of such an agent has been definitely proposed. It is true that the policeman from the nearest corner has not gone so far as to drop around and warn him that he'd better be careful. Nevertheless, he has the foreboding. He perceives dimly that a desire to chasten the stage is in the air. And he is right. It, is. It has been ever since the war. Of course an itch to lay hands on the theatre was begetting restlessness in the American bosom considerably prior to April 6, 1917. It is part of this country's Puritan inheritance to believe that playgoing is somehow bad, that an enjoyment and patronage of the theatre is sinful. This belief flows as an unconscious undercurrent in the thought even of those clergymen who try pathetically hard to seem and be liberal and unpharisaical, the kind who always begin their lectures on Avery Hopwood by saying that they yield to no one in their admiration and respect for the many splendid ladies and gentlemen of the stage whom they are proud to number among their acquaintances. Shaw, in his comparatively mild-mannered preface to "The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet," recognizes the Puritan hostility to the theatre, but, somewhat perversely, ascribes it to the fact that the _promenoirs_ have always been used as show-windows by the courtesans of each generation. I suspect, however, that that hostility was more deeply rooted. The Puritans disliked the theatre because it was jolly. It was a place where people went in deliberate quest of enjoyment. And you weren't supposed to do that on earth. Plenty of time for that later on.