And he had his way. I remember that whenever this piece of business occurred in the rehearsals, the man from the Consulate used to giggle. “Lately I was talking over The Yellow Jacket with Percy Hammond, dramatic critic. ‘Do you know what made it a success?’ he said, ‘The Property Man as played by Shaw.’ Possibly he’s right about that. But the play served its artistic purpose. It made American audiences understand something of this extraordinary art. And I’ve no doubt but that if Hazelton and Benrimo had stuck close to the originals our audiences wouldn’t have understood half so well.” So far as my experience goes, making love the main theme is not un-Chinese, but The Property Man as played on our stages is. Possibly Cantonese usage differs in this respect, but in Peking property men are always on the stage, coolies dressed in shabby blue cotton, but they are conspicuous only to the Westerner not used to Chinese conventions. They by no means have the importance attached to them in The Yellow Jacket. Compare the chapter, “External Aspects.” The Chinese Drama. R. F. Johnston. Kelly & Walsh, 1921. A slender volume that came to be written because the publishing firm had four paintings of Chinese actors which they wanted to issue in calendar form with a few words of comment from the well-known sinologue. Mr. Johnston became absorbed in the subject and wrote so much and so interestingly on it that Kelly & Walsh decided to make a book out of it. The text is much better than the pictures. Le Théâtre Chinois. Chu Chia-chien. Paris, 1922. The chief features of this book are the excellent paintings and sketches made in Peking theaters by the Russian artist, Alexandre Jacovleff. An English edition has been published by Putnam. No other book can give such a vivid notion of the real appearance as well as the spirit of the Chinese stage as this volume of inspired drawings. M. Chu Chia-chien, instructor in the École des Langues Orientales in Paris, writes well, but too briefly, on the conditions and conventions of the Chinese stage. Chinesische Literatur. Eduard Erkes. Hirt, Breslau, 1924. A brief, but up-to-the-minute sketch of Chinese literature. This volume by a University of Leipzig Privatdozent is one of a series on the literatures of various nations. The book came to me too late to include what it said on the origin of the theater in China in the text, and therefore I shall quote an interesting paragraph here. (The author speaks of the Pear Garden origin as a myth and says that the Chinese had a theater as early as other nations):