Where is our once charming acrobat—our minstrel of muscular music? What has become of these groups of fascinating people gotten up in silk and spangle? Who may the evil genius be who has taken them and their fascinating art from our stage, who the ogre of taste that has dispensed with them and their charm? How seldom it is in these times that one encounters them, as formerly when they were so much the charming part of our lighter entertainment. What are they doing since popular and fickle notions have removed them from our midst?

It is two years since I have seen the American stage. I used to say to myself in other countries, at least America is the home of real variety and the real lover of the acrobat. But I hear no one saying much for him these days, and for his charming type of art.

What has become of them all, the graceful little lady of the slack wire, those charming and lovely figures that undulate upon the air by means of the simple trapeze, those fascinating ensembles and all the various types of melodic muscular virtuosity?

We have been given much, of late, of that virtuosity of foot and leg which is usually called dancing; and that is excellent among us here, quite the contribution of the American, so singularly the product of this special physique. Sometimes I think there are no other dancers but Americans. It used to be so delightful a diversion watching our acrobat and his group with their strong and graceful bodies writhing with rhythmical certitude over a bar or upon a trapeze against a happily colored space. Now we get little more in the field of acrobatics beyond a varied buck and wing; everything seems tuxedoed for drawing room purposes. We get no more than a decent handspring or two, an over-elaborated form of split. It all seems to be over with our once so fashionable acrobat. There is no end of good stepping, as witness the Cohan Revue, a dancing team in Robinson Crusoe, Jr., and "Archie and Bertie" (I think they call themselves). This in itself might be called the modern American school: the elongated and elastic gentleman who finds his co-operator among the thin ones of his race, artistically speaking. I did not get to the circus this year, much to my regret; perhaps I would have found my lost genius there, among the animals disporting themselves in less charitable places. But we cannot follow the circus naturally, and these minstrel folk are disappearing rapidly. Variety seems quite to have given them up and replaced them with often very tiresome and mediocre acts of singing.

How can one forget, for instance, the Famille Bouvier who used to appear regularly at the fÊtes in the streets of Paris in the summer season, living all of them in a roving gipsy wagon as is the custom of these fÊte people. What a charming moment it was always to see the simple but well built Mlle. Jeanne of twenty-two pick up her stalwart and beautifully proportioned brother of nineteen, a strong, broad-shouldered, manly chap, and balance him on one hand upright in the air. It was a classic moment in the art of the acrobat, interesting to watch the father of them all training the fragile bodies of the younger boys and girls to the systematic movement of the business while the mother sat in the doorway of the caravan nursing the youngest at the breast, no doubt the perfect future acrobat. And how charming it was to look in at the doors of these little houses on wheels and note the excellent domestic order of them, most always with a canary or a linnet at the curtained window and at least one cat or dog or maybe both. This type is the progenitor of our stage acrobat, it is the primitive stage of these old-time troubadours, and it is still prevalent in times of peace in France. The strong man gotten in tawdry pink tights and much worn black velvet with his very elaborate and drawn out speeches, in delicate French, concerning the marvels of his art and the long wait for the stipulated number of dix centimes pieces before his marvellous demonstration could begin. This is, so to say, the vagabond element of our type of entertainment, the wandering minstrel who keeps generation after generation to the art of his forefathers, this fine old art of the pavement and the open country road. But we look for our artist in vain these days, those groups whose one art is the exquisite rhythmical display of the human body, concerted muscular melody. We cannot find him on the street in the shade of a stately chestnut tree as once in Paris we found him at least twice a year, and we seek him in vain in our modern music hall.

Is our acrobatic artist really gone to his esthetic death; has he given his place permanently to the ever present singing lady who is always telling you who her modiste is, sings a sentimental song or two and then disappears; to the sleek little gentleman who dances off a moment or two to the tune of his doll-like partner whose voice is usually littler than his own? Perhaps our acrobat is still the delight of those more characteristic audiences of the road whose taste is less fickle, less blasÉ. This is so much the case with the arts in America—the fashions change with the season's end and there is never enough of novelty; dancing is already dying out, skating will not prevail for long among the idle; what shall we predict for our variety which is in its last stages of boredom for us?

I suspect the so-called politeness of vaudeville of the elimination of our once revered acrobats. The circus notion has been replaced by the parlor entertainment notion. Who shall revive them for us, who admire their simple and unpretentious art; why is there not someone among the designers with sufficient interest in this type of beauty to make attractive settings for them, so that we may be able to enjoy them at their best, which in the theater we have never quite been able to do—designs that will in some way add luster to an already bright and pleasing show of talents.

I can see, for instance, a young and attractive girl bareback rider on a cantering white horse inscribing wondrous circles upon a stage exquisitely in harmony with herself and her white or black horse as the case might be; a rich cloth of gold backdrop carefully suffused with rose. There could be nothing handsomer, for example, than young and graceful trapezists swinging melodically in turquoise blue doublets against a fine peacock background or it might be a rich pale coral—all the artificial and spectacular ornament dispensed with. We are expected to get an exceptional thrill when some dull person appears before a worn velvet curtain to expatiate with inappropriate gesture upon a theme of Chopin or of Beethoven, ideas and attitudes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the musical intention; yet our acrobat whose expression is certainly as attractive, if not much more so generally, has always to perform amid fatigued settings of the worst sort against red velvet of the most depraved shade possible. We are tired of the elaborately costumed person whose charms are trivial and insignificant, we are well tired also of the ordinary gentleman dancer and of the songwriter, we are bored to extinction by the perfectly dull type of playlet which features some well known legitimate star for illegitimate reasons. Our plea is for the re-creation of variety into something more conducive to light pleasure for the eye, something more conducive to pleasing and stimulating enjoyment. Perhaps the reinstatement of the acrobat, this revival of a really worthy kind of expression, would effect the change, relieve the monotony. The argument is not too trivial to present, since the spectator is that one for whom the diversion is provided.

I hear cries all about from people who once were fond of theater and music hall that there is an inconceivable dullness pervading the stage; the habitual patron can no longer endure the offerings of the present time with a degree of pleasure, much less with ease. It has ceased to be what it once was, what its name implies. If the old school inclined toward the rough too much, then certainly the new inclines distressingly toward the refined—the stage that once was so full of knockabout is now so full of stand-still; variety that was once a joy is now a bore. Just some uninteresting songs at the piano before a giddy drop is not enough these days; and there are too many of such. There is need of a greater activity for the eye. The return of the acrobat in a more modern dress would be the appropriate acquisition, for we still have appreciation for all those charming geometrics of the trapeze, the bar, and the wire.

It is to be hoped that these men will return to us, stimulating anew their delightful kind of poetry of the body and saving our variety performances from the prevailing plague of monotone.