In addition to this, dozens of sumptuous establishments have sprung up where the pleasure of eating is supplemented by allurements to the eye and ear. Fine orchestras play nightly, the air is laden with the perfume of flowers, a scenic perspective of palm garden and marble corridor flatters the senses. The temptation, to a man wearied by a day of business or sport, to abandon the idea of going to a theatre, and linger instead over his cigar amid these attractive surroundings, is almost irresistible.

If, however, tempted by some success, he hurries his guests away from their meal, they are in no condition to appreciate a serious performance. The pressure has been too high all day for the overworked man and his enervee wife to desire any but the lightest tomfoolery in an entertainment. People engaged in the lethargic process of digestion are not good critics of either elevated poetry or delicate interpretation, and in consequence crave amusement rather than a mental stimulant.

Managers were quick to perceive that their productions were no longer taken seriously, and that it was a waste of time and money to offer high-class entertainments to audiences whom any nonsense would attract. When a play like The Swell Miss Fitzwell will pack a New York house for months, and then float a company on the high tide of success across the continent, it would be folly to produce anything better. New York influences the taste of the country; it is in New York really that the standard has been lowered.

In answer to these remarks, the question will doubtless be raised, "Are not the influences which it is asserted are killing the drama in America at work in England or on the Continent, where people also dine late and well?"

Yes, and no! People abroad dine as well, undoubtedly; as elaborately? Certainly not! With the exception of the English (and even among them dinner-giving has never become so universal as with us), no other people entertain for the pleasure of hospitality. On the Continent, a dinner-party is always an "axe-grinding" function. A family who asked people to dine without having a distinct end in view for such an outlay would be looked upon by their friends and relatives as little short of lunatics. Diplomatists are allowed certain sums by their governments for entertaining, and are formally dined in return by their guests. A great French lady who is asked to dine out twice a week considers herself fortunate; a New York woman of equal position hardly dines at home from December 1 to April 15, unless she is receiving friends at her own table.

Parisian ladies rarely go to restaurants. In London there are not more than three or four places where ladies can be taken to dine, while in this city there are hundreds; our people have caught the habit of dining away from home, a custom singularly in keeping with the American temperament; for, although it costs more, it is less trouble!

The reason why foreigners do not entertain at dinner is because they have found other and more satisfactory ways of spending their money. This leaves people abroad with a number of evenings on their hands, unoccupied hours that are generally passed at the theatre. Only the other day a diplomatist said to me, "I am surprised to see how small a place the theatre occupies in your thoughts and conversation. With us it is the pivot around which life revolves."

From one cause or another, not only the wealthy, but the thoughtful and cultivated among us, go less each year to the theatre. The abstinence of this class is the most significant, for well-read, refined, fastidious citizens are the pride of a community, and their influence for good is far-reaching. Of this elite New York has more than its share, but you will not meet them at the play, unless Duse or Jefferson, Bernhardt or Coquelin is performing. The best only tempts such minds. It was by the encouragement of this class that Booth was enabled to give Hamlet one hundred consecutive evenings, and Fechter was induced to linger here and build a theatre.

In comparison with the verdicts of such people, the opinions of fashionable sets are of little importance. The latter long ago gave up going to the play in New York, except during two short seasons, one in the autumn, "before things get going," and again in the spring, after the season is over, before they flit abroad or to the country. During these periods "smart" people generally attend in bands called "theatre parties," an infliction unknown outside of this country, an arrangement above all others calculated to bring the stage into contempt, as such parties seldom arrive before the middle of the second act, take ten minutes to get seated, and then chat gayly among themselves for the rest of the evening.

The theatre, having ceased to form an integral part of our social life, has come to be the pastime of people with nothing better to do,--the floating population of our hotels, the shop-girl and her young man enjoying an evening out. The plays produced by the gentlemen who, I am told, control the stage in this country for the moment, are adapted to the requirements of an audience that, having no particular standard from which to judge the literary merits of a play, the training, accent, or talent of the actors, are perfectly contented so long as they are amused. To get a laugh, at any price, has become the ambition of most actors and the dream of managers.

A young actress in a company that played an American translation of Mme. Sans Gene all over this continent asked me recently what I thought of their performance. I said I thought it "a burlesque of the original!" "If you thought it a burlesque here in town," she answered, "it's well you didn't see us on the road. There was no monkey trick we would not play to raise a laugh."

If one of my readers doubts the assertion that the better classes have ceased to attend our theatres, except on rare occasions, let him inquire about, among the men and women whose opinions he values and respects, how many of last winter's plays they considered intellectual treats, or what piece tempted them to leave their cosy dinner-tables a second time. It is surprising to find the number who will answer in reply to a question about the merits of a play en vogue, "I have not seen it. In fact I rarely go to a theatre unless I am in London or on the Continent!"

Little by little we have taken to turning in a vicious and ever-narrowing circle. The poorer the plays, the less clever people will make the effort necessary to see them, and the less such elite attend, the poorer the plays will become.

That this state of affairs is going to last, however, I do not believe. The darkest hour is ever the last before the dawn. As it would he difficult for the performances in most of our theatres to fall any lower in the scale of frivolity or inanity, we may hope for a reaction that will be deep and far-reaching. At present we are like people dying of starvation because they do not know how to combine the flour and water and yeast before them into wholesome bread. The materials for a brilliant and distinctly national stage undoubtedly exist in this country. We have men and women who would soon develop into great actors if they received any encouragement to devote themselves to a higher class of work, and certainly our great city does not possess fewer appreciative people than it did twenty years ago.

The great dinner-giving mania will eat itself out; and managers, feeling once more that they can count on discriminating audiences, will no longer dare to give garbled versions of French farces or feeble dramas as compiled from English novels, but, turning to our own poets and writers, will ask them to contribute towards the formation of an American stage literature.