A holiday to an American is a serious affair, so the doors of the theatre are open and the performance begins when most people are eating breakfast; 9.30 A.M. is not too soon for the man who pursues pleasure with the same intensity he puts into business. There are no reserved seats, so one must come first to be first served. One may go in at 9.30 A.M. and stay until 10.30 at night. If he leaves his seat, though, the nearest standing Socialist drops into it and he must wait for a vacancy in order to sit down again. Not over two per cent. of an audience remains longer than to see the performance through once, but there are persons who secrete campaign rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 A.M. to 10.30 P.M., thereby surviving all of the acts twice and most of them four or five times. The management calculate to sell out the house two and a half times on ordinary days and four times on holidays, and it is this system that makes such enormous receipts possible. Of course I have taken the circuit which is representative of the vaudeville idea at its best, but it is not alone in its standards or success, and what I have said about the houses in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia applies more or less to all the principal cities of the country, and in a less degree of course to the houses in the smaller cities. Some of these theatres are never closed the year round. Some are content with three matinees a week in addition to their night performances. Others open their doors about noon and close them at 10.30 at night. These are called "continuous" houses. It is manifest, I think, that the vaudeville theatre is playing an important part in the amusement world and in our national life. Perhaps we should be grateful. At present it would seem that the moral tone of a theatre is in the inverse ratio of the price of admission. The higher the price, the lower the tone. It is certain that plays are tolerated and even acclaimed on the New York stage to-day which would have been removed with tongs half a dozen years ago. [Illustration: Begged me "to soften the asperities."—Page 488.] On the eighteenth day of last April the member of Parliament for Flintshire made a formal query in the House of Commons in relation to the drama, asking "if the Government will, in view of the depraving nature of several plays now on the stage, consider the advisability of controlling theatres by licenses." The honorable member appeared to think one censorship in the person of the Lord Chamberlain not enough for the growing necessities of London. As we are no longer manufacturers but importers of plays, and largely by way of London, it is not strange that there should be some talk here of a legal censorship for our playhouses.