Jack's Poor Marie.

"A victim to levity": such was Marie Antoinette, the lady so sharmingly introduced to the audiance by the winning speaker. This unhappy Queen had been made the symbol for all the depreavity of the French Court, but Jack wasn't going to let that pass. We had to examine the influences that led her from the nursery to the marriage, and thence, step by step, to the guillotine, When we had discarded the exaggerated accusations of infamy made against her, we would find a very human woman. A victim of the poison of flattery in her early life, she was yet able, on the threshold of the scaffold, to stand alone and face with equanimity the fate of the guilotine. Jack dealt with the elegant lady with appropriate artistry, while his direct and forceful style was full equal to the underlying grimness of his theme. The tempo was sustanined throughout, right up to the final picture of the Stuatue of Libery in the Place de is Revolution: "She sees not, nor wishes to see, she knows not, nor wishes to know, the acts committed in her name."