WORLD'S END

Of course such a group would be interested in a handsome youth who had lived abroad, and spoke French fluently, and could talk about Cannes and Paris and London, Henley and Ascot and Long-champs. He played the piano, he danced well, and if he did not smoke or drink, that made him all the more an object of curiosity; the bored ladies imagined that he must be virginal, and they made themselves agreeable, and worried because he insisted upon staying in a dull office and couldn't be lured away for a tкte-а-tкte.

It was the practice of the club to give dramatic performances during the summer, in an open-air theater built in a woodland glade. There was a "dramatics committee," and hot arguments as to what sort of plays should be given. The smart crowd wanted modern things, full of talk about sex; the conservatives demanded and got something sentimental and sweet, suitable for the young people. In view of the conditions prevailing, they had given a war play called Lilac Time, which had been the success of the previous season in New York.

This summer everybody was supposed to be absorbed in war work. The businessmen went to their offices early and stayed late. The women spent their spare time rolling bandages, knitting socks and sweaters, or attending committee meetings where such activities were planned. But there were a few whom these efforts did not satisfy; perhaps their hearts were not in the killing of their fellow human beings, or in arousing the killing impulse in others. One could not say this, in the midst of all the patriotic fervors; what one said was that the cultural life of the community must not be allowed to lapse altogether, and that overworked executives who were forgoing their customary month of vacation ought to have some gracious form of entertainment.

So it was that the dramatics committee had summoned its courage and undertaken a production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, which provides a variety of outdoor diversions and has charming music. The committee cast about for players suited to the various roles, and invited Lanny to become one of two lovelorn gentlemen who wander through a forest in the neighborhood of Athens. No one on the committee knew that Lanny himself had been a lovelorn gentleman for a couple of years. He still was - for only a few days ago he had received a letter from his erstwhile sweetheart, mentioning casually in the course of other news that she was about to be married to the grandson of the Earl of Sandhaven, who had been recalled from the "Mespot" front and was now attached to the War Office in London.

Lanny said he didn't think he'd have time to rehearse a play; but the committee assured him that the work would be done in the evening - of necessity, since the part of the Duke of Athens was to be played by a stately vice-president of the First National Bank, and the part of Bottom was entrusted to a member of the town's busiest law firm. Lanny's family gave their approval, and thereafter he dined at the club with other members of the cast, and on the stage of the open-air theater he alternately pursued and repulsed a beautiful damsel whose father managed the waterworks of the city of Newcastle. To his rival for her favor he recited:

"Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none: If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone."

Lanny could say this well, because he had only to imagine that Lysander was the heir to an English earldom, and that Hermia's last name was Codwilliger, pronounced Culliver.

III

America is the land of mass production and standardization; whatever it is that you want done, you will find somebody ready to do it according to the latest improved methods - if you have the price. If you want to raise funds for charity by means of amateur theatricals, you will discover that there are firms which specialize in showing you exactly how to do it. They will send you a director to take charge; they will rent you scenery and costumes, or provide experts to make them; they will advise you what play to give, and if you choose a modern one they will arrange about the copyright; they will have tickets and programs printed - in short they will do everything to smooth the development of whatever histrionic talent may be latent in Osawatomie, Kansas, or Deadwood Gulch, South Dakota.