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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
in gender, whose words come out, edged
and clanging, as if they were disks of
metal, cut and ejected by a machine. Dur-
ing a considerable period, beginning with
1870, there was an irruption upon the stage
of players of this kind ; Miss Fanny Mo-
rant, of New York, a highly gifted actress,
whose personal force carried all before it,
being, I strongly suspect, the model whom
they caricatured. There was also a bois-
terous-slouchy masculine mode, which I
almost equally disrelished. But I am sin-
cerely sorry that I found it necessary to
pursue such, or any, of the regularly ap-
pearing players with reiterated disapproval.
I ought to have made clear in a general
way my opinion of the faultiness of the
actor's method, and occasionally, but not
often, have briefly reapplied my foot rule
to show his particular shortcomings in a
new part. I look back and admire the dig-
nified, patient silence in which these play-
ers, with scarcely an exception, bore a fre-
C 28 ]