collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it
she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a
long, long time.

Dresses there are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the
beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott
swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she
always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer
shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her
loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. There it
hangs, time-yellowed, its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as
fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead
white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next
it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the
low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which
Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly
society matron of Pittsburgh now--she whose name had been a synonym for
pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats,
cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in
history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that
eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white
silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl of lace and
chiffon. Yet there it hangs, pertly pathetic, mute evidence of her
vanished youth, her delectable beauty, and her unblushing confidence in
those same.

Up one aisle and down the next--velvet, satin, lace and broadcloth--here
the costume the great Canfield had worn in Richard III; there the little
cocked hat and the slashed jerkin in which Maude Hammond, as Peterkins,
winged her way to fame up through the hearts of a million children whose