. Our Philadelphia. s not I who led the long processiondown to the refectory, though nobody could have sus-pected it, but the Ghost of Hamlets Father, with, closebehind me, in gloom absorbed, the Prince of Denmark,mistaken by the unknowing for the little girl, my friend,whose father, with more than the usual fathers amiableendurance, had taken me with her and her sister to seethe play of Hamlet during the Christmas holidays. The theatre has become part of the modern schoolcourse. If an actor like Forbes-Robertson gives a fare-well performance of Hamlet, or a manager like BeerbohmTree produces
. Our Philadelphia. s not I who led the long processiondown to the refectory, though nobody could have sus-pected it, but the Ghost of Hamlets Father, with, closebehind me, in gloom absorbed, the Prince of Denmark,mistaken by the unknowing for the little girl, my friend,whose father, with more than the usual fathers amiableendurance, had taken me with her and her sister to seethe play of Hamlet during the Christmas holidays. The theatre has become part of the modern schoolcourse. If an actor like Forbes-Robertson gives a fare-well performance of Hamlet, or a manager like BeerbohmTree produces a patriotic melodrama, or the companyfrom the Theatre Frangais perform one of the rareclassics that the young person may be taken to, I haveseen a London theatre filled with school girls and what I hear I might imagine the theatre and theopera to be the most serious studies of every Philadelphiaschool. At the Convent I should have envied the modernstudents could I have foreseen their liberty, but they have. !fe(We-i f DOWN PINE STREET A CHILD IN PHILADELPHIA 71 more reason to envy me. The gilt has been rubbed toosoon off their gingerbread, too soon has the tinsel of theirtheatre been tarnished. My Spartan training gave me atheatre that can never cease to be a Wonderland, just as itendowed me with a Philadelphia that will endure, until thisworld knows me no more, as a beautiful, peaceful townwhere roses bloom in the sunny back-yards, and people livewith dignity behind the plain red brick fronts of its long,straight streets. CHAPTER IV: AT THE CONVENT ik S the theatre, in my memory, still gives the crown-/ \ ing glory to my holiday in Philadelphia, so, inJ. m. looking back, the brief holiday seems the spec-tacle, the romance, the supreme moment, of my early scene of my every-day life was that Convent of theSacred Heart at Torresdaie which was the end of the inter-minable ride in the Third Street horse-car and the shorterride in the Pennsylvania Railroad train.
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