LO, THE BRONTOSAUSUS

Eliza has made her precarious way across the ice, strewing her wake with the pillows that gave her the necessary embonpoint. The buzz-saw has ceased to hack at the disheveled hair of the fainted heroine, and the villain, with a furious gesture, has gone to meet his Maker. Gone are the thrillers and the tragedies and mysteries that held audiences tense for every moment of their diurnal span. Gone indeed, but the tradition seems to linger on.

Nowadays a mystery play is heralded by any title which suggests the horrible. Each plot contains an animal more terrible than the last. Bats, spiders, gorillas have been successful in providing thrills, and to them is added the octopus, the slimy vandal of the underseas. As the object of these beasts is to freeze the audience into that state of terror which precedes death and renders impossible thought, more and more frightful titles may be daily expected. Pithicanthropus erectus may soon overawe the spectators, or perhaps a pterodactyle; at the denouement they could, with customary plausibility, be found traveling salesmen who had cast such weird shadows by walking in the rain before a moving van.