"A CURTAIN TO HIS DOINGS"

"A curtain, yes, a curtain to the doings"--not of the questing uncle of Gherardi's novel but to that once equally devastating blade, the gay, the cavalier, the verbose Mr. Arlen. A curtain--for at last his brief hour has been strutted on the stage of public fancy. The enfant gate of suburban London, the treasure of America must bow to the inevitable "what and what and then again", retreating with "that lovely lady" and her friends to the shades of an Anglo-Armenian oblivion. Like many even bonnier brethren he must watch the dust collect upon his once bright leaves while bastard epigrams evince a quick decay.

Broadway has killed Mr. Arlen. With gracile gestures bred of histrionic worth the great Cornell, the capable Maude escort his trivial body to the grave of failure. His gay parade was tinsel which the lights of critical Manhattan tarnished and destroyed. Careless and floodingly he wrote; careless they killed him. And now but for the pleasant pageant of their mockery of a funeral, they are quite willing to inspect his successor. Why did he live? Why did he die? He lived because there is even in the most sophisticated heart the occasional warmth of the chambermaid's love for the "Mayfairs" of life. He dies because there are too many who can satisfy that love fully as well as the affable Mr. Arlen. The thumb of the public is turned down--"A curtain, yes, a curtain to his doings".