ear-splitting and headache-producing to the foreigner."
Such general condemnation shows deplorableignorance.*

The writer had apparently never attended an official service
in honor of Confucius, held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty

at 3 A.M. The "stone chimes", consisting of sonorous stones varying in tone
and hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions,

have a haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else.
China, I believe, is the only country that has produced music from stones.

It is naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having
a vogue in London, and that they will soon be heard in New York.

It will take some little time for Westerners to learn to listen intelligently
to our melodies which, being always in unison, in one key and in one movement,

are apt at first to sound as wearisome and monotonous
as Madame Patti's complicated notes did to me, but when they understand them

they will have found a new delight in life.
--

* Wu Tingfang is quite correct to deplore this statement as a description
of Chinese music. However, in all fairness, it is an accurate description

of how a Western ear first hears CERTAIN types of Chinese music.
After successivehearings this impression will fly away, but until then

CERTAIN types are reminiscent of two alley-cats fighting in a garbage can.
This is not meant as a degrading comment, any more so than Wu Tingfang's

comments on opera. Some music is an acquired taste, and after acquirement,
its beauty becomes not only recognizable but inescapable.

Certain other types of Chinese music can easily be appreciated
on the first hearing. -- A. R. L., 1996.

--
Although we Chinese do not divide our plays into comedies and tragedies

there is frequently a good deal of humor on the Chinese stage; yet we have
nothing in China corresponding" target="_blank" title="a.符合的；相当的">corresponding to the popular musicalcomedy of the West.

A musicalcomedy is really a series of vaudevilleperformances strung together
by the feeblest of plots. The essence seems to be catchy songs,

pretty dances, and comic dialogue. The plot is apparently immaterial,
its only excuse for existence being to give a certain order of sequence

to the aforesaid songs, dances, and dialogues. That, indeed,
is the only object for the playwright's introducing any plot at all,

hence he does not much care whether it is logical or even within
the bounds of probability. The play-goers, I think, care even less.

They go to hear the songs, see the dances, laugh at the dialogues,
and indulge in frivolous frivolities; what do they want with a plot,

much less a moral? Chinese vaudeville takes the form
of clever tumbling tricks which I think are much preferable

to the sensuous, curious, and self-revealing dances one sees in the West.
Although musicalcomedy, or, more properlyspeaking, musical farce,

is becoming more and more popular in both Europe and America
it is also becoming proportionately more farcical; although in many theaters

it is staged as often as the more serious drama, in some having
exclusive dominion; and although theater managers find that these plays

draw bigger crowds and fill their houses better than any other,
in the large cities running for over a year, I cannot help regarding

this feature of theatrical life as so much theatrical chaos.
It lacks culture, and is sometimes both bizarre and neurotic.

I do not object to patter, smart give and take, in which the comical angles
of life are exposed, if it is brilliant; neither have I anything to say

against light comedy in which the ridiculous side of things is portrayed.
This sort of entertainment may help men who have spent a busy day,

crowded with anxious moments, and weighted with serious responsibilities,
but exhibitions which make men on their way home talk not of art,

or of music, or of wit, but of "the little girl who wore a little black net"
are distinctly to be condemned. Even the class who think it waste of time

to think, and who go to the theater only to "laugh awfully",
are not helped by this sort of entertainment. Such songs as the following,

which I have culled from the `Play Pictorial', a monthly published in London,
must in time pall the taste of even the shallow-minded.

"Can't you spare a glance?
Have we got a chance?

You've got a knowing pair of eyes;
When it's 2 to 1

It isn't much fun,"
This is what she soon replies:

"Oh, won't you buy a race-card,
And take a tip from me?

If you want to find a winner,
It's easy as can be

When the Cupid stakes are starting,
Your heads are all awhirl,

And my tip to-day
Is a bit each way

On the race-card girl."
Yet this, apparently, is the sort of thing which appeals

to the modern American who wants amusement of the lightest kind,
amusement which appeals to the eye and ear with the lightest possible tax

on his already over-burdened brain. He certainly cannot complain
that his wishes have not been faithfully fulfilled. It may be due

to my ignorance of English, but the song I have just quoted seems to me silly,
and I do not think any "ragtime music" could make it worth singing.

Of course many songs and plays in the music halls are such
as afford innocent mirth, but it has to be confessed

that there are other things of a different type which it is not wise
for respectable families to take the young to see.

I would not like to say all I think of this feature of Western civilization,
but I may quote an Englishman without giving offense. Writing in

the `Metropolitan Magazine', Louis Sherwin says: "There is not a doubt
that the so-called `high-brow dancer' has had a lot to do

with the bare-legged epidemic that rages upon the comic-opera stage to-day.
Nothing could be further removed from musicalcomedy than the art

of such women as Isadora Duncan and Maude Allen. To inform Miss Duncan
that she has been the means of making nudity popular in musical farce

would beyond question incur the lady's very reasonable wrath.
But it is none the less true. When the bare-legged classic dancer

made her appearance in opera houses, and on concert platforms
with symphony orchestras, it was the cue for every chorus girl

with an ambition to undress in public. First of all
we had a plague of Salomes. Then the musicalcomedy producers,

following their usual custom of religiously avoiding anything original,
began to send the pony ballets and soubrettes on the stages

without their hosiery and with their knees clad in nothing
but a coat of whitewash (sometimes they even forgot to put on the whitewash,

and then the sight was horrible). The human form divine,
with few exceptions, is a devilishspectacle unless it is properly made up.

Some twenty years from now managers will discover what audiences found out
months ago, that a chorus girl's bare leg is infinitely less beautiful

than the same leg when duly disguised by petticoats and things."
Chapter 16. Conjuring and Circuses

After what I have said as to the position of the actor in China my readers
will not be surprised at my saying that the performance of a conjuror

should not be encouraged. What pleasure can there be in being tricked?
It may be a great display of dexterity to turn water into wine,

to seem to cut off a person's head, to appear to swallow swords,
to escape from locked handcuffs, and to perform the various cabinet tricks,

but cleverness does not alter the fact that after all it is only deception
cunningly contrived and performed in such a way as to evade discovery.

It appears right to many because it is called "legerdemain" and "conjuring"
but in reality it is exactly the same thing as that by which

the successful card-sharper strips his victims, viz., such quickness of hand
that the eye is deceived. Should we encourage such artful devices?

History tells many stories as to the way in which people
have been kept in superstitiousbondage by illusions and magic,

and if it be now held to be right to deceive for fun
how can it be held to have been wrong to deceive for religion?

Those who made the people believe through practising deception
doubtless believed the trick to be less harmful than unbelief. I contend,

therefore, that people who go to see conjuring performances derive
no good from them, but that, on the contrary, they are apt to be impressed

with the idea that to practisedeception is to show praiseworthy skill.
It is strange how many people pay money to others to deceive them.

More than ever before, people to-day actually enjoy being cheated.
If the tricks were clumsily devised and easily detected

there would be no attraction, but the cleverer and more puzzling the trick
the more eagerly people flock to see it.