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224 the house that shadows built
ities to not more than a thousand spectators a night. Mary Pickford was playing to millions every night; and popular enthusiasms seem to roll up in geometrical ratio to the number of adherents and converts. It was a craze no longer, but an appetite.
The European war, bursting in August, 1914, curiously intensified the appetite and confirmed the habit. During the two years of our hesitation it exercised a subconscious fascination on us all. The news reel, a European development, was bringing from European battlefields such glimpses as the censor allowed. Exhibitors varied even the long films with news reels. People who had never entered a moving-picture show before came now to see with their own eyes soixantequinze batteries in action, German Infantry on the march, Italian Alpini scaling the precipices, the king reviewing his armies, the premier leaving Parliament House. They remained to watch the “feature”; and so acquired the habit. Also the suppressed spiritual excitement of America came to the surface in a mania for amusement. Though the “road” was yielding before the impact of the moving picture, the legitimate houses of Broadway never did better.
During this period the moving picture perfected its own education. “My single chance for immortality,” said Sarah Bernhardt when she consented to act for the film. Alas, all that remains to America of Queen Elizabeth is one disintegrating print in the storehouse of the Para