Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/15

SCREENLAND

By Robert E. Sherwood

Drawings by Everett Shinn

The Costume Pictures are a Terrible Blow to the Hollywood Barbers—but the Fencing Instructors are Growing Fat.

human being who is deposited on this earth, for one reason or another, passes through two stages before he (or, as it frequently happens, she) attains full growth.

The first stage is Infancy. The second is known as "the romantic age."

The symptoms of the romantic age in the female of the species are these:
 * Reading and writing poetry.
 * Pasting pictures of Ramon Navarro on the mirror.
 * Gazing at the moon.
 * Wishing that the days of chivalry would come back.
 * Writing fan letters to handsome actors.
 * Posing for photographs with a rose held between the teeth.
 * Practising Greek dances on the lawn.

The symptoms evinced by the male element are almost parallel:
 * Reading the novels of Scott, Henty, Dumas and other writers of historical fiction.
 * Gazing at the moon.
 * Trying to cultivate a small, silky mustache and a pair of side-burns.
 * Writing fan letters to comely ingenues.
 * Posing for photographs with Bill Hart expression of calm determination.
 * Practising tenor solos.

None of these symptoms are serious or incurable. Indeed, they are all part of the natural course of events.