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has dared to write genuinely dull dialogue. Many writers have achieved dull dialogue under a misapprehension on their parts, and still others have started out with the honest intention of making their characters dull in the interests of veracity. But these latter have sooner or later succumbed to the temptation either of enlarging upon the dullness until it became burlesque or of capitulating entirely and throwing in a clever line simply to keep up the tone of the play.

But Miss Gale saw the truth and has kept it whole. She was depicting uninspired American family life (almost for the first time in our literature) and she held fast to the ideals of American family conversation. In the opening scene of the first act of Miss Lulu Bett there is not a single redeeming feature in the remarks, made by the Deacon family across the creamed salmon. It is nothing short of magnificent.

"Dwight Herbert" is, of course, the high priest of this elaborate banality, and in his creation Miss Gale has given to America a man made in its own image, something rarely done on our native stage. And, as if this were not enough, she has also brought, whining and scuffling before the footlights, our first normal stage-child, in the unpleasing person of the recalcitrant "Monona." For years we have seen no small children on the stage who did not spend their time coming downstairs in their nighties to reunite uncongenial parents or bringing tears to the hard eyes of adventuresses by telling them that they looked "des like muvver." It was with the full force of an original dramatic creation