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The Vitagraphoscope

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences
do not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each "turn" is the evil
thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may
have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or
two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound
the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not
desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic
cyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of (property)
china-ware. Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle
them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the
lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.

Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of
the united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated
by the comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to
the Cerberi of the fifty-cent seats.

But our program ends with a brief "turn" or two; and then to the
exits. Whoever sits the show out may find, if he will, the slender
thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that,
perhaps, only the Walrus will understand.


~Extracts from a letter from the first vice-president of the Republic
Insurance Company, of New York City, to Frank Goodwin, of Coralio,
Republic of Anchuria.~

~My Dear Mr. Goodwin:~--Your communication per Messrs. Howland and
Fourchet, of New Orleans, has reached us. Also their draft on N.Y.
for $100,000, the amount abstracted from the funds of this company
by the late J. Churchill Wahrfield, its former president.... The
officers and directors unite in requesting me to express to you their
sincere esteem and thanks for your prompt and much appreciated return
of the entire missing sum within two weeks from the time of its
disappearance.... Can assure you that the matter will not be allowed
to receive the least publicity.... Regret exceedingly the distressing
death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but... Congratulations on your
marriage to Miss Wahrfield... many charms, winning manners, noble and
womanly nature and envied position in the best metropolitan
society....

~Cordially yours,
Lucius E. Applegate,~
FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT THE REPUBLIC INSURANCE
COMPANY.



~The Vitagraphoscope~
(Moving Pictures)
~The Last Sausage~

SCENE--An Artist's Studio. The artist, a young man of prepossessing
appearance, sits in a dejected attitude, amid a litter of sketches,
with his head resting upon his hand. An oil stove stands on a pine
box in the center of the studio. The artist rises, tightens his waist
belt to another hole, and lights the stove. He goes to a tin bread
box, half-hidden by a screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage,
turns the box upside-down to show that there is no more, and chucks
the sausage into a frying-pan, which he sets upon the stove.
The flame of the stove goes out, showing that there is no more oil.
The artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage, in a sudden access
of rage, and hurls it violently from him. At the same time a door
opens, and a man who enters receives the sausage forcibly against
his nose. He seems to cry out; and is observed to make a dance step
or two, vigorously. The newcomer is a ruddy-faced, active, keen-
looking man, apparently of Irish ancestry. Next he is observed
to laugh immoderately; he kicks over the stove; he claps the artist
(who is vainly striving to grasp his hand) vehemently upon the back.
Then he goes through a pantomime which to the sufficiently intelligent
spectator reveals that he has acquired large sums of money by trading
pot-metal hatchets and razors to the Indians of the Cordillera
Mountains for gold dust. He draws a roll of money as large as
a small loaf of bread from his pocket, and waves it above his head,
while at the same time he makes pantomime of drinking from a glass.
The artist hurriedly secures his hat, and the two leave the studio
together.


~The Writing on the Sands~

SCENE--The Beach at Nice. A woman, beautiful, still young,
exquisitely clothed, complacent, poised, reclines near the water,
idly scrawling letters in the sand with the staff of her silken
parasol. The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose
is one that you feel to be impermanent--you wait, expectant, for her
to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably
become stock-still. She idly scrawls in the sand; and the word that
she always writes is "Isabel." A man sits a few yards away. You can
see that they are companions, ever if no longer comrades. His face
is dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable--but not quite. The two
speak little together. The man also scratches on the sand with his
cane. And the word that he writes is "Anchuria." And then he looks
out where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle with death in
his gaze.


~The Wilderness and Thou~

SCENE--~The Borders of a Gentleman's Estate in a Tropical Land.~
An old Indian, with a mahogany-colored face, is trimming the grass
on a grave by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and
walks slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief
twilight. In the edge of the grove stands a man who is stalwart,
with a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut
loveliness. When the old Indian comes up to them the man drops money
in his hand. The grave-tender, with the stolid pride of his race,
takes it as his due, and goes his way. The two in the edge of
the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close--
for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little round
field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?




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