One result of all this fresh air is that we won’t even go indoors to be amused.  Hence the outdoor theatre.  Why go to a play when it’s so lovely outside?  But to go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting Greek theatre with a real moon rising above it—­that’s another matter.  I shall never forget “Midsummer Night’s Dream” as given by the Theosophical Society at Point Loma.  Strolling through the grounds with the mauve and amber domes of their temples dimly lighted I found myself murmuring:  “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.”  In a canyon by the sea we found a theatre.  The setting was perfect and the performance was worthy of it.  Never have I seen that play so beautifully given, so artistically set and delightfully acted, though the parts were taken by students in the Theosophical School.  After the last adorable little fairy had toddled off—­I hope to bed—­we heard a youth behind us observe, “These nuts sure can give a play.”  We echoed his sentiments.

I should make one exception to my statement that people won’t go indoors to be amused.  They go to the “movies”—­I think they would risk their lives to see a new film almost as recklessly as the actors who make them.  The most interesting part of the moving-picture business is out-of-doors, however.  You are walking down the street and notice an excitement ahead.  Douglas Fairbanks is doing a little tightrope walking on the telegraph wires.  A little farther on a large crowd indicates further thrills.  Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit.  Once while we were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked the road for some distance.  A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—­placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, waiting for his next cue.  The lady in pink satin had made a little dugout for herself under the track, and as the locomotive thundered up she was to slip underneath—­a job that the mines of Golconda would not have tempted me to try.  Moving-picture actors have a very high order of courage.  We could not stay for the denouement, as we had a nervous old lady with us, who firmly declined to witness any such hair-raising spectacle.  I looked in the paper next morning for railway accidents to pink ladies, but could find nothing, so she probably pulled it off successfully.

Every year new theatres are built.  We have seen Ruth St. Denis at the Organ Pavilion of the San Diego Exposition, and Julius Caesar with an all-star cast in the hills back of Hollywood, where the space was unlimited, and Caesar’s triumph included elephants and other beasts, loaned by the “movies,” and Brutus’ camp spread over the hillside as it might actually have done long ago.  There is a place in the back country near Escondido, where at the time of the harvest moon an Indian play with music is given every year.  At Easter thousands of people go up Mount Rubidoux, near Riverside, for the sunrise service.  Some celebrated singer usually takes part and it is very lovely—­quite unlike anything else.