nores the invitation and stays at home. It is the upper West Side that accepts the invitation and regiments of motor-cars from Riverside Drive, in continuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a time I stood and watched the ugly black scarabs with their acetylene eyes crawl up the approach and disappear through the great arch and then, walking a few steps, I stopped before the Thalia Theatre, as I have stopped so many times, to admire the noble façade with its flight of steps and its tall columns, for this is one of my dream theatres. Often have I sat in the first row of the dress circle, which is really a circle, leaning over the balustrade, gazing into the pit a few feet below, and imagining the horseshoe as it might appear were it again frequented by the fashion of the town. This is a theatre, in which, and before which, it has often amused me to fancy myself a man of wealth, when my first diversion would be a complete renovation—without any reconstruction or vandalism—of this playhouse, and the production of some play by Shakespeare, for to me, no other theatre in New York, unless it be the Academy of Music, lends itself so readily to a production of Shakespeare as the Thalia. As I write these lines, I recall that the old New York theatres are fast disappearing: Wallack's is gone; Daly's is no more; even Weber and Fields's has been demolished. Cannot something be done to save the Thalia, which is much older than any of these? Cannot this proud auditorium be reconse-
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