" A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the
theatre could be told what he knew about it! He considered spreading
the news, but decided to retain the superiority his secret knowledge
gave him.
Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was
compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies. The
cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were social
entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in an
inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social
derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls
also arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely
follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made
little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled
at these dreadful buffooneries. One subtitle read: "I hate to kill
him--murder is so hard to explain."
This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where
earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the
public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very
day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he
was asked to laugh at a cross--eyed man posing before a camera that
fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by
the impact of the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not
art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial
and hardship, to confer upon the public.
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