FATHER (pointing). Do you see those three peagreen volumes over there on the second shelf from the top?

SON (going over to a bookcase). These?

FATHER. Yes, that is the only presentation copy of Gilbert I have ever seen. Evidently, he gave very few books away. Those volumes were given to Captain Shaw, Chief of the London Fire Brigade. In the first volume is an inscription in Gilbert's hand from Iolanthe:

O Captain Shaw!

Type of true love kept under!

Could thy brigade

With cold cascade

Quench my great love, I wonder?

Captain Shaw, I am told, was in the audience on the first night of Iolanthe, and was greatly embarrassed at this reference to himself. And there is an inscription in each of the other volumes.

SON. Very nice.

FATHER. You may be sure it is. The fact is that you have never, well, "hardly ever," heard a really good operetta. It is so much easier to be stupid than witty; and as for music, why there's enough good music in The Mikado to make a dozen Broadway successes. Take any recent operetta and you'll find two tunes, or three at most, and not very good ones, interwoven into the piece over and over again. The men who are writing to-day have neither imagination nor training; Sullivan, if his reputation as a composer

of light operas had n't overshadowed his other accomplishments, would nevertheless have been a very respectable figure in the musical world.

SON. Which was the greater? Gilbert or

FATHER. You might as well ask which is the more important, food or drink? Gilbert wrote the book and turned it over to Sullivan, who wrote the music. He fitted the music to the words so perfectly that, clever as they are, without the melodies we associate with them they seem rather forced and unconvincing. Try the music on the piano; the result is the same: lovely, but lacking something. Put 'em together; it's a sort of wedding. "Whom God hath joined let no man put asunder. The fact is that, when after years of coöperation there was a falling out between the two men, neither accomplished anything.

SON. Did they quarrel?

FATHER. Yes, and over nothing: a strip of carpet, I believe. There was a third man in the great partnership, D'Oyly Carte, almost an equal genius. He bought a bit of carpet, which Gilbert thought was an unnecessary expense; Sullivan sided with Carte, and the fat was in the fire. Carte was the producer, a stage manager raised to the nth power. No detail was so insignificant as not to receive his attention. He was a tremendous worker- every act, every scene, as finally given, was the result of the most careful study. The world hardly realizes how much of our stagecraft is due to D'Oyly Carte. No stage had ever been lit with electric light until he first used

it, in 1881, in Patience, at the Savoy Theatre. It was a great experiment, and "if it works," Carte said in his announcement, "it will enable us to secure effects hitherto impossible." I wish he could see upper Broadway to-night.

SON. It's a gay white way all right. I never heard of what's his name, D'Oyly Carte?

FATHER. He was the greatest theatrical manager of his day who was not an actor. I don't suppose there ever was such an actor-manager as Irving. The only survivor of the famous group is Rupert D'Oyly Carte; he it is who now produces the operas in England, and he is every whit as particular as his father. He was very nice to me the last time I was in London, and gave me photographs of all three of the great

men.

SON. They must have had lots of fun together.

FATHER. Yes, and they worked like the very devil. All three men were autocrats as well as geniuses. "You are not in the picture," D'Oyly Carte would shout at a rehearsal to someone who sought to obtrude himself somewhat. "My music, if you please," Sullivan would suggest to some tenor singing off key. And woe betide the poor wretch who dared to inject a little wit of his own: "his doom was extremely hard"; for Gilbert was "techy" to the last degree. "Do you think you can improve upon my humor?" and there was never an answer.

SON. I suppose The Mikado

FATHER. You are quite right. In England The