streets of the village, it takes its origin and theory from the snugness
of the interior.

The restless reader replies that he has seen photoplays that showed
ballrooms that were grandiose, not the least cosy. These are to be
classed as out-of-door scenery so far as theory goes, and are to be
discussed under the head of Splendor Pictures. Masses of human beings
pour by like waves, the personalities of none made plain. The only
definite people are the hero and heroine in the foreground, and maybe one
other. Though these three be in ball-costume, the little triangle they
occupy next to the camera is in sort an interior, while the impersonal
guests behind them conform to the pageant principles of out-of-doors, and
the dancers are to the main actor as is the wind-shaken forest to the
charcoal-burner, or the bending grain to the reaper.

The Intimate Motion Picture is the world's new medium for studying, not
the great passions, such as black hate, transcendent love, devouring
ambition, but rather the half relaxed or gently restrained moods of human
creatures. It gives also our idiosyncrasies. It is gossip _in extremis_.
It is apt to chronicle our petty little skirmishes, rather than our
feuds. In it Colin Clout and his comrades return.

The Intimate Photoplay should not crowd its characters. It should not
choke itself trying to dramatize the whole big bloody plot of Lorna
Doone, or any other novel with a dozen leading people. Yet some gentle
episode from the John Ridd farm, some half-chapter when Lorna and the
Doones are almost forgotten, would be fitting. Let the duck-yard be
parading its best, and Annie among the milk-pails, her work for the
evening well nigh done. The Vicar of Wakefield has his place in this
form. The Intimate-and-friendly Motion Picture might very well give