Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/912

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790
JERUSALEM AND JAZZ

broaden his effects, to over-emphasize his tympanic tricks; he begins to depend too much on the stuffed trumpet and a freak battery of percussion. Lindsay, at least this phase of him, is the chief exponent of a movement that might be called (if the patrioteers will permit an umlaut) an American Überbrett'l. But, pandering to a cruder response, what (in The Santa Fé Trail, The Congo, King Solomon) was dedicated to the shrine of a Higher Vaudeville, is now offered on the platform of a lower cabaret.


"His sweetheart and his mother were Christian and meek.
They washed and ironed for Darius every week.
One Thursday he met them at the door:—
Paid them as usual, but acted sore/

"He said:—'Your Daniel is a dead little pigeon.
He's a good hard worker, but he talks religion.'
And he showed them Daniel in the lions' cage.
Daniel standing quietly, the lions in a rage. . . .

"Thus roared the lions:—
'We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,
We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.'"


It is too easy a laugh to be proud of. And in the delightful Rhymed Scenario dedicated to Mae Marsh, the whimsy and delicate colours of Lindsay's pattern are broken by the raucous refrain. Romance yields to tinsel; the gaudy rhythms, the lit run-way and the entire Winter Garden chorus are summoned by lines like:


"Oh, quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!"


Politically, Lindsay is even more clamorous and less compelling. He has a score of contradictory ideals, a hundred factional idols. Experience does not make Lindsay more critical; he never seems