THE DOLDRUMS

Although Boston may have claimed at one time or another to be the hub of shoes and ships and sealing wax, it has never--even when it boasted of an opora company--set itself up as the center of the theatrical world. It has, however, managed to remain respectable in the matter of dramatic entertainment and usually has afforded enough plays to satisfy any nicely adjusted histrionic digest on. Therefore the coming drought during which almost every legitimate theatre remains closed for a fortnight is not so much a Lenten penance as a sad testimonial to the decline of "the road."

There is a delicious period during one's college days--when April hours are over, when Spring vacation is approaching and when work has lessened for everyone but the distraught Senior--and this time is that in which Boston's theatres suffer sleeping sickness and the sole diversions open to the entertainment seeker are the movies and those sacred institutions of the drama which clutter up Scoolay Square. Such diversions are amusing but they cannot quite fill every requirement. If the playhouses must be quiescent at some time during the year there would appear, at least to the student, to be no better time than the Midyear period. Then he could devote undivided attention to his books, safe in the knowledge that Tremont Street was but an echoing lane and that dust lay an inch thick on Harpo's harp.