I confess I am a fastidious lover. The dearer a person or a thing are to me the more I demand from them, the more painfully I am hurt by their flaws. Hence the number of my dislikes exceeds that of my likes. Hence I grit my teeth at the sight of Maria Gay in _Carmen_. Because the music of that opera is so full of eternal symbols to me, because when listening to it I understand why Nietzsche preferred Bizet to Wagner,—I am scalded by its vulgar cabaretization. Had I not been stirred by Mr. Powys’ remarkable liturgy of St. Oscar Wilde, I would not have been so keenly pricked by his subsequent remark in his Verlaine lecture that Rimbaud was a ruffian. It is because I cannot live without music that I am compelled to suffer weekly indigestion from the sauerkraut menus furnished by Mr. Stock’s bâton. Will Mr. Scavenger of the rug-philosophy expect me not to swear and damn at the prospect of being doomed to a long season of Meistersingers, Perambulators, Goldmarckian fudge, Brahmsian Academics, Stockian Jubilee-Confetti, and similar insults? Let me touch another sore:—the Little Theatre, the Temple of Living Art, to which I have looked up with reverence and hope; the only theatrical organization in the city that seemed to have other considerations outside of box-receipts. I was present at the opening night of this season, and left the little “catacomb” with an aching heart. What reason, what artistic reason, is there to stage Andreyev’s _Sabine Women_ anywhere outside of Russia? The play was written as a biting satire against the Russian liberals who fought against the government with Tolstoyan Non-Resistance instead of joining the revolutionary proletariat. In Andreyev’s land he is perfectly, painfully understood; but here, on Michigan Avenue, the satire degenerated into a boring burlesque! Even Raymond Johnson’s suggestive, graceful horizons fail to save the situation. As to _Lithuania_—what is the matter with the Little Theatre males? They move and speak like hermaphrodites, they drink vodka and swear in squeaking falsettoes, they appear so feeble and effeminate in comparison with the virile, gruesome Ellen Van Volkenburg and Miriam Kipper. Then, how realistic—shades of Zola! Maurice Browne vomits so much more realistically than Charlie Chaplin in _Shanghaied_....