“I beg your pardon!” I said, as sweetly as I could. “Come now,” went on Hollis, “don’t be an idiot. You know very well that nobody spouts any stuff like that these days. That sketch went along all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that right-arm exercise and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or Bill Jones would.” “I’ll admit,” said I, earnestly (for my theory was being touched upon), “that on all ordinary occasions all of us use commonplace language to convey our thoughts. You will remember that up to the moment when the captain makes his terrible discovery all the characters on the stage talk pretty much as they would, in real life. But I believe that I am right in allowing him lines suitable to the strong and tragic situation into which he falls.” “Tragic, my eye!” said my friend, irreverently. “In Shakespeare’s day he might have sputtered out some high-cockalorum nonsense of that sort, because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank verse and discharged the cook with an epic. But not for B’way in the summer of 1905!” “It is my opinion,” said I, “that great human emotions shake up our vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out of an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on the stage to portray those emotions.” “That’s where you fellows are wrong,” said Hollis. “Plain, every-day talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics.” “Possibly, a little later,” I continued. “But just at the time—just as the blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical and deep-tongued isn’t wrung from a man in spite of his modern and practical way of speaking, then I’m wrong.” “Of course,” said Hollis, kindly, “you’ve got to whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the atmosphere, and scream: “Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!” What she would actually do would be to call up the police by ’phone, ring for some strong tea, and get the little darling’s photo out, ready for the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner—a stage corner—it’s all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and hiss: “All is lost!” Off the stage he would remark: “This is a conspiracy against me—I refer you to my lawyers.’” “I get no consolation,” said I, gloomily, “from your concession of an accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I was following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace way, they should do the same on the stage.”