COMIC OPERA

If Irving Berlin should stray into Hemenway gymnasium some afternoon about five o'clock he would undoubtedly receive the inspiration of his life. He would engage without further reference some few members of the "gym class" on their aesthetic interpretation alone. Not only dancers, but, acrobats, contortionists, weight lifters, dumb-bells, all under one room and operating to music. Nothing lacking but a name. Ah! The Soap Box Revue!.

To be sure, as Kipling would say, that seems to be another story, and the first sight to greet Mr. Berlin or anyone else straying under the roof of Hemenway, is the aesthetic class. Perhaps the term "aesthetic" is misleading. Certainly nothing light and airy is in the minds of the performers gravely gravitating through the rhythmic movements of the exercise. Right hands become wrong hands. Feet become hay-feet, straw-feet, then lead feet. In fact the limbs of budding lawyers and scientists alike feel the call of the wild.

Here is a slender youth manfully turning a large spoked wheel by jerks and tugs. You say he is preparing for a sailor's career at the helm of a bounding bark. It may be that he is only the prospective owner of a small car. Over there, a future commuter is practicing strap hanging by chinning himself with one hand slowly but firmly over a horizontal bar. Later on he will turn a few handsprings on the mats. (The children in the party will enjoy this.)

Other exercises are less easily explained, the frantic pulling on the handles of the little express wagon that does not move, the juggling of 500 lb. weights, lap after lap on the running track (perhaps the commuter will miss his train). The "sights" in Tartarus itself were not more diversified or less productive of apparent results.

But there is one objection to Mr. Berlin and the Soap-box Revue of Hemenway Gymnasium. At present it is all exercise and admission is free. Under the Berlin regime seats in the second balcony for this pastoral scene would retail from two dollars up.