There are so many potent vintages set on the board;
so many connoisseurs who will offer to tell you beforehand of the
merits of their favourite brands.
I confess, to my shame, that when an actor with whose gifts I am
unfamiliar is received on his entrance with a storm of applause, I
am not prejudiced, as I ought to be, in his favour. On the contrary I
follow his performance the more judicially, and if I cannot find that
it corresponds to his apparent reputation I am apt (wrongly again) to
conclude that the fault lies with him and not with myself.
[Illustration: THE OLD GAIETY IN A NEW HOME.
MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND MR. LESLIE HENSON AT THE WINTER GARDEN
THEATRE.]
But in the case of _Kissing Time_, after a rather dull First Act,
during which I kept telling myself that I was not suffering from
senile decay, I had to admit that the gods were in a great measure
justified of their elect. For one thing the authors, taking a bold
and original line (from the French), had produced a coherent plot;
and both dialogue and lyrics were above what I understand to be
the average in this kind. One expects, of course, a little Cockney
licence--"pyjamas" rhymed with "Palmer's," and so on--and a certain
amount of popular banality, as in the song, "Some Day" (rapturously
approved); but there were excellent verses on the text, "A woman has
no mercy on a man," and, I doubt not, much other good stuff which
I missed because Mr.
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