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Now chat the Vitagraph and Biograph companies have made arrangements to produce the excellent plays of Liebler, and of Klaw and Erlanger, we may well plant a milestone on the road of progress. It marks a new era in photoplay, and, in conjecturing as to the future, we wonder what next? Slow and sure has been the steady growth of Moving Pictures. All great things move and grow slowly. Those things that mature quicklv, like the mushroom, are usually short-lived ; and those that mature slowly, like the oak, grow to great strength and size and are more enduring. And most of the lower animals, such as the dog, are in possession of all their faculties in a few days or weeks ; but the human animal requires many years for its full development — sometimes thirty or forty years.
The slow, steady growth of IMotion Pictures argues for their peimianency and for their gradual perfection. The stage kept step with the progress of human thought for centuries, but lately it seems to have declined in popularity and in usefulness. Many evil influences have been impressed upon it, and many undesirable citizens have gained control of it, all of which has had a tendency to d-egrade rather than to uplift. Besides, the stage has its limitations: the human voice can be heard just so far; there can be just so many scenes, and just so many persons may see a play at the same time. Hence, not only was the time ripe for a new successor, or partner, to the stage, but the decadence of the speaking drama demanded a substitute. As the stage grew up out of a necessity in human nature, so is the Motion Picture growing up, for the same reason. When the price of a good seat to see a good show had soared to $2.50, it was only natural that a low-priced substitute w^ould come, and it did.
Almost all persons possess the dramatic perception, in greater or less degree, but very few persons possess the dramatic faculty. These few are born for the stage, and most of them seem to gravitate to that sphere of life to which they seem best fitted. Every age makes its contributions to the dramatic art. As William Winter says: '' Gibber and Macklin, surviving in the best days of Garrick, Peg W^offington and Kitty Glive, were always praising the better days o^ Wilks, Betterton and Elizabeth Barry. Aged playgoers of the period of Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble were firmly persuaded that the drama had been buried, never to rise again, with the dust of Garrick and
Henderson
Tlie New York veteran of todav will sigh for Burton's
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