A fine book, but a still finer play. That, I think, . will be the final judgment of those who know both intimately.

For drama—if it be real drama—does, after all, reveal what the printed word does not. It gets home to the heart in a lightning flash. At the play, the audience is tense and concentrated in a moment of great emotion. There is no likelihood of such interruption as disturbs us, more often than not, by some fantastic freak of nature, when we near the climax of a book. We are gripped, hypnotized almost, by the actor’s art. The actual intonation of the spoken word, the dumb appeal of stricken human figures, only a few feet distant, move us more nearly than the vision of suffering evoked but for the few out of mere letterpress. Theatrical effects are broader, cruder, made by a terser medium. When poignant, as in the case of The Garden of Allah, they are unforgettable.