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Kansas University Weekly.
MISS JERRY.
The final number of the Lecture Course, Miss Jerry, on Wednesday evening, was given to the satisfaction of a large audience. Miss Jerry is a novel combination of magic lantern and dramatic reading, a "picture play," as the inventor and author, Alexander Black, of the Brooklyn Times, styles it. It is certainly a happy invention. While the pictures thrown upon the screen in rapid succession, showing each new grouping of the characters of the little drama and no little play of feature and expression, can not be said to take the place of real live actors, they have some great advantages over them. The actors have no moments of weakness, the caste is always adequate, and especially the play is free from dependence upon the well known and well worn scenery of the local theatre. Indeed this may be said to be the great advantage the picture play enjoys, that it may follow with perfect freedom the movement of its characters from place to place. Not even the "carload of special scenery" of the traveling spectacular melodrama can begin to vie with the effects that the scene shifter of Miss Jerry produces by a mere change of the slides. The succession of pictures, bound together and animated by the recurring figures of personages of the story, came to have something of the same suggestion of reality that belongs to the scenery of the stage, and it was hard now and then to realize that this semblance of life, was not even skin deep, and that behind the screen all the time was the emptiness of the chapel platform.
The play was well adapted to the novel means used in presenting it, but is not a conspicuously brilliant performance. It is interesting especially as an experiment, and will undoubtedly lead to a fuller development of the idea. The reader, Miss Carrie Louise Ray, did her part with intelligence and vivacity, but the play would have been the gainer from a greater power indentifying her voice with the various characters. Her efforts in this direction can hardly be called happy. A. G. C.
Prof. Wilcox last Thursday afternoon in in the Physics Building delivered to the students of the Greek Department a lecture on the Olympic games of ancient Greece. The lecture was illustrated with lantern slides and was made very interesting to those who attended. It was one of the peripatetic lectures given on alternate Thursdays by the instructors in Greek.
The Department of Physics has just received some optical apparatus from the Brashear Works, for some original experiments to be conducted by Mr. Rice. The only duplicate set of this apparatus is at the University of Chicago.
Prof. Hector Cowan's family, with Mrs. Cowan's mother and sister, Alice Smith, who was in school last year, left Lawrence Wednesday to return to their home at Jamestown New York.
Last Saturday night was an ideal night for boating on the Kaw and many University men with their ladies took advantage of the fact to make a pleasant trip up the river.
Each student of the Psychology class, last Monday, was required to hand in a report of some original psychological discovery which he had made during the previous week.
The date of the Chancellor's reception to the Seniors of the various schools has been changed from May 6, as announced in our last issue, to May 14.
How's this?—Twenty-six pages for a weekly college publication is a record-breaker! And there is not a single line of sorid, acrimonious criticism in it either.
Prof. Bailey on Wednesday of last week took his class in Sanitary Chemistry to the ice factory to study the processes there employed.
Mr. Burton, Sophomore Arts, was at home a few days last week to attend the funeral of a relative.
The students in "Wilhelm Tell" were treated to a thorough quiz Friday of last week.
Prof. E. Haworth has returned from his visit to Missouri.