And you, Mr. Merryman, the painted grin worn from your pale lips, you too were dissatisfied, if I remember rightly, with your part. You wanted to make the people cry, not laugh. Was it a higher ambition? The poor tired people! so much happens in their life to make them weep, is it not good sport to make them merry for awhile? Do you remember that old soul in the front row of the Pit? How she laughed when you sat down on the pie! I thought she would have to be carried out. I heard her talking to her companion as they passed the stage-door on their way home. “I have not laughed, my dear, till to-night,” she was saying, the good, gay tears still in her eyes, “since the day poor Sally died.” Was not that alone worth the old stale tricks you so hated? Aye, they were commonplace and conventional, those antics of yours that made us laugh; are not the antics that make us weep commonplace and conventional also? Are not all the plays, played since the booth was opened, but of one pattern, the plot old-fashioned now, the scenes now commonplace? Hero, villain, cynic—are their parts so much the fresher? The love duets, are they so very new? The death-bed scenes, would you call them _un_commonplace? Hate, and Evil, and Wrong—are _their_ voices new to the booth? What are you waiting for, people? a play with a plot that is novel, with characters that have never strutted before? It will be ready for you, perhaps, when you are ready for it, with new tears and new laughter. You, Mr. Merryman, were the true philosopher. You saved us from forgetting the reality when the fiction grew somewhat strenuous. How we all applauded your gag in answer to the hero, when, bewailing his sad fate, he demanded of Heaven how much longer he was to suffer evil fortune. “Well, there cannot be much more of it in store for you,” you answered him; “it’s nearly nine o’clock already, and the show closes at ten.” And true to your prophecy the curtain fell at the time appointed, and his troubles were of the past. You showed us the truth behind the mask. When pompous Lord Shallow, in ermine and wig, went to take his seat amid the fawning crowd, you pulled the chair from under him, and down he sat plump on the floor. His robe flew open, his wig flew off. No longer he awed us. His aped dignity fell from him; we saw him a stupid-eyed, bald little man; he imposed no longer upon us. It is your fool who is the only true wise man.