How to avoid this chilling influence is a puzzle that has agitated every producer on Broadway. Your New York manager has a list of the seats regularly occupied by the critics, and these go out first. Then the wine agents and book-makers aforesaid buy the tickets laid aside for them. Next the general public has an opportunity, of which it is slow to take advantage, and then whatever has been left is given away. Nobody ever saw a small "first night" audience in Manhattan, nor one in which there were not at least three hundred enthusiastic persons. This enthusiasm deceives no one--least of all the newspaper men for whom is it intended--and it rebounds like a ball against the hardness of the general imperturbability. Many a time, while the gallant three hundred were splitting their gloves and callousing their hands, I have seen traveling from critic to critic that glance of understanding and disapproval which has sealed the fate of so many thousand plays.
The New York critics are about a score in number, and, during the past few years, there have been many changes in the corps. Its dean, William Winter, resigned from The Tribune, where his post is filled by Arthur Warren. Alan Dale, of The American, continues to be the most widely known of our writers on theatrical topics, and we still have with us, as stand-bys, Adolph Klauber, of The Times; Louis De Foe, of The World; Rennold Wolf, of The Telegraph; Acton Davies, of The Evening Sun; Charles Darnton, of The Evening World; Rankin Towse, of The Post, and Robert Gilbert Welsh, of The Evening Telegram. The Press has been carrying on a lively theatrical war, and, perhaps for that reason, its reviews manifest not only ignorance but the most bumptious disregard of general and expert opinion. Arthur Brisbane having declared against "abuse", The Evening Journal finds good in everything; The Sun has had no regular critic since it lost Walter Prichard Eaton, and The Herald boasts that it prints only "reports" of performances. "First nights" are arranged, when that is possible, on different evenings, so that all the critics may be present at each, but, when there is a conflict, every man picks out the opening he considers most important and either lets the others go until later in the week or sends his assistant.