It was only a little way to the foot of the Acropolis and the Theatre of Dionysus. We have visited no place where I wished so much to linger. This was the theatre of Greece in her Golden Age. Here Æschylus and Euripides had their first nights--or days, perhaps, for I believe they were mostly matinees--and Sophocles, too, and here it was that the naughty Aristophanes burlesqued them with his biting parodies. Here it was they competed for prizes, and tried to be friends though playwrights, and abused the manager when they got into a corner together, and abused the actors openly, and vowed that some day they would build a theatre of their own where they could present their own plays in their own way, and where their suppressed manuscripts could get a hearing. Perhaps history does not record these things, but it does not need to. I know a good many playwrights and managers and actors, and I know that human nature has not changed in twenty-four hundred years. I know that the old, old war was going on then, just as it is now, and will continue to go on so long as there are such things as proscenium and auditorium, box-office, gallery, and reserved seats. I took one of the last named--a beautiful marble chair in the front row, just below the plinth where once the throne of Hadrian sat--a chair with an inscription which told that in the old days it was reserved for a priest or dignitary--and I looked across the marble floor where the chorus did its rhythmic march, and beyond to the marble stage-front with its classic reliefs and the figure of Silenus whose bowed shoulders have so long been the support of dramatic art. The marble floor--they called it the Orchestra then--is no longer perfect, and grass and flowers push their way up between the slabs. The reliefs are headless and scarred, but the slabs are still the same the chorus trod, the place is still a theatre, and one has but to close his eyes a little to fill it with forms vague and shadowy indeed, as ghosts are likely to be, but realities none the less. Our party had moved along now to other things, and Laura and I lingered for the play. It was much better than our theatres at home. There was no dazzle of lights, no close air or smell of gas, and there was plenty of room for one to put his feet. However, the play I did not care for so much as the chorus. The acting was heavy and stilted, I thought, and declamatory. I was inclined to throw a piece of the theatre at the leading man. [Illustration: I WOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR A POSITION IN THE CHORUS MYSELF] But the chorus! Why, the very words "Greek Chorus" have something in them that rouses and thrills, and I know, now, the reason why. In movement, in voice, in costume it was pure poetry. I would have applied for a position in the chorus myself, but Laura suddenly announced that the show was over and that everybody but us had gone long ago.