Even the vulgar effects become softened by this setting.

The ragged tramp who climbs a tree and falls asleep in the shady branches and then lives through a reversed world in which he and his kind feast and glory and live in palaces and sail in yachts, and, when the boiler of the yacht explodes, falls from the tree to the ground, becomes a tolerable spectacle because all is merged in the unreal pictures.

Or, to think of the other extreme, gigantic visions of mankind crushed by the Juggernaut of war and then blessed by the angel of peace may arise before our eyes with all their spiritual meaning.
Even the whole play may find its frame in a setting which offers a five-reel performance as one great imaginative dream.

In the pretty play, "When Broadway was a Trail," the hero and heroine stand on the Metropolitan Tower and bend over its railing.

They see the turmoil of New York of the present day and ships passing the Statue of Liberty.