Fiddle-Dee-Dee.
It was some time ago that I saw the advertisement, and in mentioning it I do not think I am advertising any play that is now being produced.
Though if I were, I do not believe the theaters would make much profit out of the advertisement!
It was a big wall poster of the play called “Fiddle-Dee-Dee "—whatever that play may be. I read only one line of the announcement, but that line stayed with me, for it was this: "Fiddle-Dee-Dee—a sorrow-dispeller."
The man who wrote that advertisement knew his business. He understood that what mankind wants more than anything else in this world is a good, reliable sorrow-dispeller. He knew that most folks would call the price of admission to his theater cheap if thereby they could have the use, though only for two hours, of a genuine sorrow-dispeller. And so he applied that term to "Fiddle-Dee-Dee."
Now I know nothing about the play "Fiddle-Dee-Dee." It may be no better or worse than the average of the plays performed in our American theaters. But I know that not the best play of them all—not even Shakespeare in the few instances in which Shakespeare appears on our American stage,—can honestly be advertised as a sorrow-dispeller.
There is no balm for sorrow in the mock representation of other folks' sorrows or joys. There is no panacea for grief in the sight of fifty painted ladies and gentlemen pretending, with more or less success, that they are fifty other ladies and gentlemen—or fools and villains, as the case may be—who died a century ago, or who never lived at all. Sorrow is a very real thing, and it is not to be dispelled by shams.
No; if you want a sorrow-dispeller, there is only one Book to which you can go, and that is not a book of plays.
There is only one Person to whom you can go, and that is not Irving or Terry or—Sara Bernhardt. "Come unto Me, all ye that sorrow and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The rest that He gives is not such as the world gives, in its theaters and ball-rooms. It is the rest that comes from noble labor. It is the surcease of sorrow that comes from dispelling the sorrow of others.
For there is only one medicine for grief, and that is the cup of sacrifice which Christ drank, and which in turn He hands to each of His willing disciples.
All other sorrow-dispellers are disappointments and shams. They are "Fiddle-Dee-Dees."