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laughter of Moliere. The clown threw out a low jest, to which his master, simulating a prudish indignation, responded with thumps upon the head. But the adroit clown was unexcelled in the art of receiving affronts. He knew to perfection how to bend his body like a bow under the impulse of a kick. After receiving on one cheek a full-armed blow, he stuffed his tongue and began to whine until a new blow passed the artificial swelling into the other cheek. The flour on his face and the red powder of his wig disappeared under the shower of slaps, enveloping him like a cloud. At last he exhausted all his resources of low scurrility, ridiculous contortions, grotesque grimaces, and pretended aches, and fell at full length to the ground. Whereupon, the ringmaster, judging this gratuitous show long enough and that the public was sufficiently fascinated, sent him off with a final cuff.
"Then the music began with such violence that the painted canvas trembled. The clown, having seized the sticks of a drum on one of the beams of the scaffolding, mingled a triumphant rataplan with the cracked thunder of the cymbals and the distracted wail of the clarinet. The ringmaster, roaring again with his heavy voice, announced that the show was about to begin ; and, as a sign of defiance, he threw two or three old fencing gloves among his fellow wrestlers."
We have quoted this at length, for we shall make further reference to it in future chapters.
NO DRAMA WITHOUT CONFLICT
In this bit of narrative we have picture values, characterizations, movement and even action. But we have no drama. Why? There is no emotional conflict, no under-the-surface struggle. Photoplays of this character, full of bustle and a variety of incident, have been produced. But they were of trivial value. Some of them may have offered a certain momentary entertainment. But they possessed nothing of real power, and were forgotten immediately after the audience had left the theatre. It is the drama, the thing of emotional human struggle, that grips the spectator and remains in his memory. No one having seen it can ever forget that moment in the "Miracle Man," when the child throws away his crutches and struggles up the path on
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