TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14844, 9 December 1913, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

We all laugh and cry at Emotions the same things. In the to main, the same elemental Order. ideas that "got a rise"

out of our ancestors will do the same for us. Therefore the playwright who desires to move an audience uses conscientiously one or another well-worn specimens from what, in his own language, he calls his "bag of tricks," or sometimes, more magnificently, his "tools of emotion." An American expert has now classified the proved emotion-raisers under three headings: (1) Tears, (2) Laughs, (3) Thrills. *Ho finds that only thirty stage situations are specified in their action upon the tear-ducts. Three of these require a child actor. The child must die upon the stage (Little Jiva, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," is the classic example); or must be seen in his nightie saying his prayers; or he must be a povertystricken infant telling his father of all the fine things Santa Glaus is sure to bring him. "The writing of the letter to Santa Clans is an infallible tear-

retter. Used in 'The Sign of the Rose.'" Then, of course, there is the scene in which a lost child is returned to its mother: at her cry of .iiy Baby!" the sternest audience dissolves in tears. A tender reference to a picture of a mother is another moving thing. Music played softly off the stage, as in "Milestones," darkies singing in the distance, and church chimes on Christmas Eve, also make for emotion. I>enham 'KMd Homestead" had not only these, but nearly all the rest of the thirty pathetao motives in it; and he died a millionaire as & result of his play! Any love scene played in the moonlight is highly emotional. "When Knighthood was in Flower" prospers by this, and "another equally famous play in which it happens is 'llomeo and Juliet,' " As for the things men laugh at, there is a choice amongst a hundred-odd specimens. "Intoxication in almost any form," "The use of a swear-word," "The spectacle of a man laden with many large bundles," or of a dignified character who, on entering a room--6 cne, "stumbles over a rug"—these have quite high repute as laugh-pro-vokers. Not much more subtle i& the

dovic© of making a husband talk against women's rights, until, hearing his wife's voice calling, he subsides into sudden meekness, and goes. Or that of two lovers anxious to exchange a kiss, who are constantly interrupted by some one's entrance, or by the tolophono bell, or tho too much interested small boy. Amongst •'Thrill' , effects '■A woman's shriek or scream, even in the worst play WT itten, will thrill an audience to the marrow." Shadows upon a wall are thrill-getters. It is particularly gruesome when an avenger so arrives as to cast his shadow before. Only the blase and hypercritical playgoer fails to have his spine "shivered" or his tears set free by such conventional shifts— but that is chiefly because he comes to the theatre steeled against this eort of thing. So many ■warnings aro The being publishe-i against Canadian what may bo called abLand j.enteo speculation in GanaBoom. dian land, that the British investor has even less excuse than he used to have for buying land he has not seen. The latest is perhaps more impressive than others, because it emanates from an official body, tho Chamber of Commerce of Fernie, a British Columbian mining town. "Real estate swindling," cays a bulletin issued by the Chamber, "has been reduced to a science. Many of the big realty corporations issue instructions to their agent*, showing just how the 'sucker' is to be hooked. They teach their agents how to piny on the weaknesses of human nature to get tho money of those who can be persuaded without seeing." Many "suburban" sub-divisions that are hawked about are parts of farms. The land was bought for from £3 to £30 an acre, and cut up into "graveyard lots," and is being sold at from £20 to £30 per lot to people who take the agents' word for its value. These general statements are supported by the testimony of people in particular enses. A man bought allotments on the representation of an agent that they were two blocks away from the post office in a certain town, and found that they were four miles out. "I know of property celling at £200 per acre that stands upon a precipitous bluff unapproachable except by balloon," cays a resident of another town. "... Unless a man can build on the perpendicular side of a sandcliff, I fail to sco what value, even remote value, these parcols of land can have." The Fernie Chamber of Commerce ad-rises people not to buy unimproved real estate at all now, for all "sub-division stuff" is on the . down grade, and within the next few years a lot of it will be sold to pay taxes. The warning is one of a number of indications that the- Western Canadian land boom has burst.

Coinciding appropriately "Boats with the International Confor ferenco on Safety at Sea, Half." now sitting in London, an article which appears in the "Nautical Magazine" takes a very gloomy outlook of the provision inado for getting passengers away from big vessels in caso of disaster. The voice of the seaman, it says, is hardly heard in those matters, "but the seaman who has had actual experience of lowering boats in a seaway knows that in spite of tlie panic legislation after the loss of the Titanic, in spite of the deliberations and reports of the Boats and Davits Commifctoe, we are not one whit" more forward." The cry of "boats for all" is a mere parrot-cry, cays the writer, for under circumstances that might easily arise in a shipwreck, it would be a case of "boats for half." If a ship gete a list of a certain number of degrees, the boats and rafts on one side cannot be got out. To give reasonable security in disaster to all on board these big Atlantic liners, there should bo boats for all—and enough of them to do away with the necessity for crowding people into them, so that they become unmanageable in a pea—there should be efficient crews to manage them, and arrangements should be made so that all could be launched from either side of the vessel, say in three hours. But these conditions are impossible. A vessel carrying 3000 persons would want 75 boats, a number which could not be placed so as to be launched from either side in three hours ""What is wanted is a system by which ample floatable contrivances can be quickly launched from the lee side of the ship, the people placed on board, and kept afloat for three hours. If they get a little wet never mind, and with this in view it seems to us that the only quick and effective means would be to have large rafts as well as boats, and, for launching, wires worked from power winches in place of the old-fashioned cumboTsomo three and four-fold hand davit-tackles." The writer thinks a light steel raft to accommodate 300 people could bo launched without difficulty, and that three or four of these contrivances, plus boats, would accommodate the thousands of people if disaster overtook one of these great vessels.