STAGE-LAND. 

by Jerome K. Jerome

TO

THAT HIGHLY RESPECTABLE BUT UNNECESSARILY

RETIRING INDIVIDUAL, OF WHOM

WE HEAR SO MUCH

BUT

SEE SO LITTLE, "THE EARNEST STUDENT OF THE DRAMA, "

THIS

(COMPARATIVELY) TRUTHFUL LITTLE BOOK

IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. 

CONTENTS. 

 THE HERO THE VILLAIN THE HEROINE THE COMIC MAN THE LAWYER THE ADVENTURESS THE SERVANT GIRL THE CHILD THE COMIC LOVERS THE PEASANTS THE GOOD OLD MAN THE IRISHMAN THE DETECTIVE THE SAILOR

STAGE-LAND. 

THE HERO. 

His name is George, generally speaking. "Call me George!" he says to theheroine. She calls him George (in a very low voice, because she is soyoung and timid). Then he is happy. 

The stage hero never has any work to do. He is always hanging about andgetting into trouble. His chief aim in life is to be accused of crimeshe has never committed, and if he can muddle things up with a corpse insome complicated way so as to get himself reasonably mistaken for themurderer, he feels his day has not been wasted. 

He has a wonderful gift of speech and a flow of language calculatedto strike terror to the bravest heart. It is a grand thing to hear himbullyragging the villain. 

The stage hero is always entitled to "estates, " chiefly remarkable fortheir high state of cultivation and for the eccentric ground plan of the"manor house" upon them. The house is never more than one story high, but it makes up in green stuff over the porch what it lacks in size andconvenience. 

The chief drawback in connection with it, to our eyes, is that allthe inhabitants of the neighboring village appear to live in the frontgarden, but the hero evidently thinks it rather nice of them, as itenables him to make speeches to them from the front doorstep--hisfavorite recreation. 

There is generally a public-house immediately opposite. This is handy. 

These "estates" are a great anxiety to the stage hero. He is not whatyou would call a business man, as far as we can judge, and his attemptsto manage his own property invariably land him in ruin and distraction. His "estates, " however, always get taken away from him by the villainbefore the first act is over, and this saves him all further troublewith regard to them until the end of the play, when he gets saddled withthem once more. 

Not but what it must be confessed that there is much excuse for the poorfellow's general bewilderment concerning his affairs and for his legalerrors and confusions generally. Stage "law" may not be quite the mostfearful and wonderful mystery in the whole universe, but it's nearit--very near it. We were under the impression at one time that weourselves knew something--just a little--about statutory and common law, but after paying attention to the legal points of one or two plays wefound that we were mere children at it. 

We thought we would not be beaten, and we determined to get to thebottom of stage law and to understand it; but after some six months'effort our brain (a singularly fine one) began to soften, and weabandoned the study, believing it would come cheaper in the end to offera suitable reward, of about 50, 000 pounds or 60, 000 pounds, say, to anyone who would explain it to us. 

The reward has remained unclaimed to the present day and is still open. 

One gentleman did come to our assistance a little while ago, but hisexplanations only made the matter more confusing to our minds than itwas before. He was surprised at what he called our density, and said thething was all clear and simple to him. But we discovered afterward thathe was an escaped lunatic. 

The only points of stage "law" on which we are at all clear are asfollows:

That if a man dies without leaving a will, then all his property goes tothe nearest villain. 

But if a man dies and leaves a will, then all his property goes towhoever can get possession of that will. 

That the accidental loss of the three-and-sixpenny copy of a marriagecertificate annuls the marriage. 

That the evidence of one prejudiced witness of shady antecedents isquite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachablegentleman of crimes for the committal of which he could have had nopossible motive. 

But that this evidence may be rebutted years afterward, and theconviction quashed without further trial by the unsupported statement ofthe comic man. 

That if A forges B's name to a check, then the law of the land is that Bshall be sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. 

That ten minutes' notice is all that is required to foreclose amortgage. 

That all trials of criminal cases take place in the front parlor of thevictim's house, the villain acting as counsel, judge, and jury rolledinto one, and a couple of policemen being told off to follow hisinstructions. 

These are a few of the more salient features of stage "law" so far aswe have been able to grasp it up to the present; but as fresh acts andclauses and modifications appear to be introduced for each new play, we have abandoned all hope of ever being able to really comprehend thesubject. 

To return to our hero, the state of the law, as above sketched, naturally confuses him, and the villain, who is the only human being whodoes seem to understand stage legal questions, is easily able to fleeceand ruin him. The simple-minded hero signs mortgages, bills of sale, deeds of gift, and such like things, under the impression that he isplaying some sort of a round game; and then when he cannot pay theinterest they take his wife and children away from him and turn himadrift into the world. 

Being thrown upon his own resources, he naturally starves. 

He can make long speeches, he can tell you all his troubles, he canstand in the lime-light and strike attitudes, he can knock the villaindown, and he can defy the police, but these requirements are not muchin demand in the labor market, and as they are all he can do or caresto do, he finds earning his living a much more difficult affair than hefancied. 

There is a deal too much hard work about it for him. He soon givesup trying it at all, and prefers to eke out an uncertain existence bysponging upon good-natured old Irish women and generous but weak-mindedyoung artisans who have left their native village to follow him andenjoy the advantage of his company and conversation. 

And so he drags out his life during the middle of the piece, raving atfortune, raging at humanity, and whining about his miseries until thelast act. 

Then he gets back those "estates" of his into his possession once again, and can go back to the village and make more moral speeches and behappy. 

Moral speeches are undoubtedly his leading article, and of these, itmust be owned, he has an inexhaustible stock. He is as chock-full ofnoble sentiments as a bladder is of wind. They are weak and waterysentiments of the sixpenny tea-meeting order. We have a dim notion thatwe have heard them before. The sound of them always conjures up to ourmind the vision of a dull long room, full of oppressive silence, brokenonly by the scratching of steel pens and an occasional whispered "Giveus a suck, Bill. You know I always liked you;" or a louder "Please, sir, speak to Jimmy Boggles. He's a-jogging my elbow. "

The stage hero, however, evidently regards these meanderings as gems ofbrilliant thought, fresh from the philosophic mine. 

The gallery greets them with enthusiastic approval. They are awarm-hearted people, galleryites, and they like to give a hearty welcometo old friends. 

And then, too, the sentiments are so good and a British gallery is somoral. We doubt if there could be discovered on this earth any body ofhuman beings half so moral--so fond of goodness, even when it isslow and stupid--so hateful of meanness in word or deed--as a moderntheatrical gallery. 

The early Christian martyrs were sinful and worldly compared with anAdelphi gallery. 

The stage hero is a very powerful man. You wouldn't think it to look athim, but you wait till the heroine cries "Help! Oh, George, save me!" orthe police attempt to run him in. Then two villains, three extra hiredruffians and four detectives are about his fighting-weight. 

If he knocks down less than three men with one blow, he fears that hemust be ill, and wonders "Why this strange weakness?"

The hero has his own way of making love. He always does it from behind. The girl turns away from him when he begins (she being, as we havesaid, shy and timid), and he takes hold of her hands and breathes hisattachment down her back. 

The stage hero always wears patent-leather boots, and they are alwaysspotlessly clean. Sometimes he is rich and lives in a room with sevendoors to it, and at other times he is starving in a garret; but ineither event he still wears brand-new patent-leather boots. 

He might raise at least three-and-sixpence on those boots, and when thebaby is crying for food, it occurs to us that it would be better if, instead of praying to Heaven, he took off those boots and pawned them;but this does not seem to occur to him. 

He crosses the African desert in patent-leather boots, does the stagehero. He takes a supply with him when he is wrecked on an uninhabitedisland. He arrives from long and trying journeys; his clothes are raggedand torn, but his boots are new and shiny. He puts on patent-leatherboots to tramp through the Australian bush, to fight in Egypt, todiscover the north pole. 

Sometimes he is a gold-digger, sometimes a dock laborer, sometimes asoldier, sometimes a sailor, but whatever he is he wears patent-leatherboots. 

He goes boating in patent leather boots, he plays cricket in them;he goes fishing and shooting in them. He will go to heaven inpatent-leather boots or he will decline the invitation. 

The stage hero never talks in a simple, straightforward way, like a mereordinary mortal. 

"You will write to me when you are away, dear, won't you?" says theheroine. 

A mere human being would reply:

"Why, of course I shall, ducky, every day. "

But the stage hero is a superior creature. He says:

"Dost see yonder star, sweet?"

She looks up and owns that she does see yonder star; and then off hestarts and drivels on about that star for full five minutes, and says hewill cease to write to her when that pale star has fallen from its placeamid the firmament of heaven. 

The result of a long course of acquaintanceship with stage heroes hasbeen, so far as we are concerned, to create a yearning for a new kind ofstage hero. What we would like for a change would be a man who wouldn'tcackle and brag quite so much, but who was capable of taking care ofhimself for a day without getting into trouble. 

THE VILLAIN. 

He wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette; that is how we know heis a villain. In real life it is often difficult to tell a villain froman honest man, and this gives rise to mistakes; but on the stage, as wehave said villains wear clean collars and smoke cigarettes, and thus allfear of blunder is avoided. 

It is well that the rule does not hold off the stage, or good menmight be misjudged. We ourselves, for instance, wear a cleancollar--sometimes. 

It might be very awkward for our family, especially on Sundays. 

He has no power of repartee, has the stage villain. All the good peoplein the play say rude and insulting things to him, and smack at him, and score off him all through the act, but he can never answer themback--can never think of anything clever to say in return. 

"Ha! ha! wait till Monday week, " is the most brilliant retort that hecan make, and he has to get into a corner by himself to think of eventhat. 

The stage villain's career is always very easy and prosperous up towithin a minute of the end of each act. Then he gets suddenly let in, generally by the comic man. It always happens so. Yet the villain isalways intensely surprised each time. He never seems to learn anythingfrom experience. 

A few years ago the villain used to be blessed with a hopeful andphilosophical temperament, which enabled him to bear up under theseconstantly recurring disappointments and reverses. It was "no matter, "he would say. Crushed for the moment though he might be, his buoyantheart never lost courage. He had a simple, child-like faith inProvidence. "A time will come, " he would remark, and this idea consoledhim. 

Of late, however, this trusting hopefulness of his, as expressed in thebeautiful lines we have quoted, appears to have forsaken him. We aresorry for this. We always regarded it as one of the finest traits in hischaracter. 

The stage villain's love for the heroine is sublime in itssteadfastness. She is a woman of lugubrious and tearful disposition, added to which she is usually incumbered with a couple of priggish andhighly objectionable children, and what possible attraction thereis about her we ourselves can never understand; but the stagevillain--well, there, he is fairly mashed on her. 

Nothing can alter his affection. She hates him and insults him to anextent that is really unladylike. Every time he tries to explain hisdevotion to her, the hero comes in and knocks him down in the middleof it, or the comic man catches him during one or the other of hisharassing love-scenes with her, and goes off and tells the "villagers"or the "guests, " and they come round and nag him (we should think thatthe villain must grow to positively dislike the comic man before thepiece is over). 

Notwithstanding all this he still hankers after her and swears she shallbe his. He is not a bad-looking fellow, and from what we know of themarket, we should say there are plenty of other girls who would jump athim; yet for the sake of settling down with this dismal young female ashis wife, he is prepared to go through a laborious and exhaustive courseof crime and to be bullied and insulted by every one he meets. His lovesustains him under it all. He robs and forges, and cheats, and lies, andmurders, and arsons. If there were any other crimes he could commit towin her affection, he would, for her sweet sake, commit them cheerfully. But he doesn't know any others--at all events, he is not well up in anyothers--and she still does not care for him, and what is he to do?

It is very unfortunate for both of them. It is evident to the merestspectator that the lady's life would be much happier if the villain didnot love her quite so much; and as for him, his career might be calmerand less criminal but for his deep devotion to her. 

You see, it is having met her in early life that is the cause of all thetrouble. He first saw her when she was a child, and he loved her, "ay, even then. " Ah, and he would have worked--slaved for her, and have madeher rich and happy. He might perhaps even have been a good man. 

She tries to soothe him. She says she loathed him with an unspeakablehorror from the first moment that her eyes met his revolting form. Shesays she saw a hideous toad once in a nasty pond, and she says thatrather would she take that noisome reptile and clasp its slimy bosom toher own than tolerate one instant's touch from his (the villain's) arms. 

This sweet prattle of hers, however, only charms him all the more. Hesays he will win her yet. 

Nor does the villain seem much happier in his less serious loveepisodes. After he has indulged in a little badinage of the abovecharacter with his real lady-love, the heroine, he will occasionally trya little light flirtation passage with her maid or lady friend. 

The maid or friend does not waste time in simile or in metaphor. Shecalls him a black-hearted scoundrel and clumps him over the head. 

Of recent years it has been attempted to cheer the stage villain'sloveless life by making the village clergyman's daughter gone on him. But it is generally about ten years ago when even she loved him, and herlove has turned to hate by the time the play opens; so that on the wholehis lot can hardly be said to have been much improved in this direction. 

Not but what it must be confessed that her change of feeling is, underthe circumstances, only natural. He took her away from her happy, peaceful home when she was very young and brought her up to this wickedovergrown London. He did not marry her. There is no earthly reason whyhe should not have married her. She must have been a fine girl at thattime (and she is a good-looking woman as it is, with dash and go abouther), and any other man would have settled down cozily with her and haveled a simple, blameless life. 

But the stage villain is built cussed. 

He ill-uses this female most shockingly--not for any cause or motivewhatever; indeed, his own practical interests should prompt him to treather well and keep friends with her--but from the natural cussedness towhich we have just alluded. When he speaks to her he seizes her by thewrist and breathes what he's got to say into her ear, and it tickles andrevolts her. 

The only thing in which he is good to her is in the matter of dress. Hedoes not stint her in dress. 

The stage villain is superior to the villain of real life. The villainof real life is actuated by mere sordid and selfish motives. The stagevillain does villainy, not for any personal advantage to himself, butmerely from the love of the thing as an art. Villainy is to him its ownreward; he revels in it. 

"Better far be poor and villainous, " he says to himself, "than possessall the wealth of the Indies with a clear conscience. I will be avillain, " he cries. "I will, at great expense and inconvenience tomyself, murder the good old man, get the hero accused of the crime, and make love to his wife while he is in prison. It will be a risky andlaborious business for me from beginning to end, and can bring me nopractical advantage whatever. The girl will call me insulting names whenI pay her a visit, and will push me violently in the chest when I getnear her; her golden-haired infant will say I am a bad man and may evenrefuse to kiss me. The comic man will cover me with humorous opprobrium, and the villagers will get a day off and hang about the village pub andhoot me. Everybody will see through my villainy, and I shall be nabbedin the end. I always am. But it is no matter, I will be a villain--ha!ha!"

On the whole, the stage villain appears to us to be a rather badly usedindividual. He never has any "estates" or property himself, and hisonly chance of getting on in the world is to sneak the hero's. He hasan affectionate disposition, and never having any wife of his own he iscompelled to love other people's; but his affection is ever unrequited, and everything comes wrong for him in the end. 

Our advice to stage villains generally, after careful observation of(stage) life and (stage) human nature, is as follows:

Never be a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is tooharassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the risksand labor. 

If you have run away with the clergyman's daughter and she still clingsto you, do not throw her down in the center of the stage and call hernames. It only irritates her, and she takes a dislike to you and goesand warns the other girl. 

Don't have too many accomplices; and if you have got them, don't keepsneering at them and bullying them. A word from them can hang you, andyet you do all you can to rile them. Treat them civilly and let themhave their fair share of the swag. 

Beware of the comic man. When you are committing a murder or robbing asafe you never look to see where the comic man is. You are so carelessin that way. On the whole, it might be as well if you murdered the comicman early in the play. 

Don't make love to the hero's wife. She doesn't like you; how can youexpect her to? Besides, it isn't proper. Why don't you get a girl ofyour own?

Lastly, don't go down to the scenes of your crimes in the last act. Youalways will do this. We suppose it is some extra cheap excursion downthere that attracts you. But take our advice and don't go. Thatis always where you get nabbed. The police know your habits fromexperience. They do not trouble to look for you. They go down in thelast act to the old hall or the ruined mill where you did the deed andwait for you. 

In nine cases out of ten you would get off scot-free but for thisidiotic custom of yours. Do keep away from the place. Go abroad or tothe sea-side when the last act begins and stop there till it is over. You will be safe then. 

THE HEROINE. 

She is always in trouble--and don't she let you know it, too! Her lifeis undeniably a hard one. Nothing goes right with her. We all have ourtroubles, but the stage heroine never has anything else. If she only gotone afternoon a week off from trouble or had her Sundays free it wouldbe something. 

But no; misfortune stalks beside her from week's beginning to week'send. 

After her husband has been found guilty of murder, which is about theleast thing that can ever happen to him, and her white-haired father hasbecome a bankrupt and has died of a broken heart, and the home ofher childhood has been sold up, then her infant goes and contracts alingering fever. 

She weeps a good deal during the course of her troubles, which wesuppose is only natural enough, poor woman. But it is depressing fromthe point of view of the audience, and we almost wish before the eveningis out that she had not got quite so much trouble. 

It is over the child that she does most of her weeping. The child hasa damp time of it altogether. We sometimes wonder that it never catchesrheumatism. 

She is very good, is the stage heroine. The comic man expresses a beliefthat she is a born angel. She reproves him for this with a tearful smile(it wouldn't be her smile if it wasn't tearful). 

"Oh, no, " she says (sadly of course); "I have many, many faults. "

We rather wish that she would show them a little more. Her excessivegoodness seems somehow to pall upon us. Our only consolation whilewatching her is that there are not many good women off the stage. Lifeis bad enough as it is; if there were many women in real life as good asthe stage heroine, it would be unbearable. 

The stage heroine's only pleasure in life is to go out in a snow-stormwithout an umbrella and with no bonnet on. She has a bonnet, we know(rather a tasteful little thing); we have seen it hanging up behind thedoor of her room; but when she comes out for a night stroll during aheavy snow-storm (accompanied by thunder), she is most careful to leaveit at home. Maybe she fears the snow will spoil it, and she is a carefulgirl. 

She always brings her child out with her on these occasions. She seemsto think that it will freshen it up. The child does not appreciate thesnow as much as she does. He says it's cold. 

One thing that must irritate the stage heroine very much on theseoccasions is the way in which the snow seems to lie in wait for herand follow her about. It is quite a fine night before she comes on thescene: the moment she appears it begins to snow. It snows heavily allthe while she remains about, and the instant she goes it clears up againand keeps dry for the rest of the evening. 

The way the snow "goes" for that poor woman is most unfair. It alwayssnows much heavier in the particular spot where she is sitting than itdoes anywhere else in the whole street. Why, we have sometimes seen aheroine sitting in the midst of a blinding snow-storm while the otherside of the road was as dry as a bone. And it never seemed to occur toher to cross over. 

We have even known a more than unusually malignant snow-storm to followa heroine three times round the stage and then go off (R. ) with her. 

Of course you can't get away from a snow-storm like that! A stagesnow-storm is the kind of snow-storm that would follow you upstairs andwant to come into bed with you. 

Another curious thing about these stage snow-storms is that the moon isalways shining brightly through the whole of them. And it shines only onthe heroine, and it follows her about just like the snow does. 

Nobody fully understands what a wonderful work of nature the moon isexcept people acquainted with the stage. Astronomy teaches you somethingabout the moon, but you learn a good deal more from a few visits toa theater. You will find from the latter that the moon only shines onheroes and heroines, with perhaps an occasional beam on the comic man:it always goes out when it sees the villain coming. 

It is surprising, too, how quickly the moon can go out on the stage. At one moment it is riding in full radiance in the midst of a cloudlesssky, and the next instant it is gone! Just as though it had been turnedoff at a meter. It makes you quite giddy at first until you get used toit. 

The stage heroine is inclined to thoughtfulness rather than gayety. 

In her cheerful moments the stage heroine thinks she sees the spirit ofher mother, or the ghost of her father, or she dreams of her dead baby. 

But this is only in her very merry moods. As a rule, she is too muchoccupied with weeping to have time for frivolous reflections. 

She has a great flow of language and a wonderful gift of metaphor andsimile--more forcible than elegant--and this might be rather trying ina wife under ordinary circumstances. But as the hero is generallysentenced to ten years' penal servitude on his wedding-morn, he escapesfor a period from a danger that might well appall a less fortunatebridegroom. 

Sometimes the stage heroine has a brother, and if so he is sure to bemistaken for her lover. We never came across a brother and sister inreal life who ever gave the most suspicious person any grounds formistaking them for lovers; but the stage brother and sister are soaffectionate that the error is excusable. 

And when the mistake does occur and the husband comes in suddenly andfinds them kissing and raves she doesn't turn round and say:

"Why, you silly cuckoo, it's only my brother. "

That would be simple and sensible, and would not suit the stage heroineat all. No; she does all in her power to make everybody believe it istrue, so that she can suffer in silence. 

She does so love to suffer. 

Marriage is undoubtedly a failure in the case of the stage heroine. 

If the stage heroine were well advised she would remain single. Herhusband means well. He is decidedly affectionate. But he is unfortunateand inexperienced in worldly affairs. Things come right for him at theend of the play, it is true; but we would not recommend the heroineto place too much reliance upon the continuance of this happy stateof affairs. From what we have seen of her husband and his businesscapabilities during the five acts preceding, we are inclined to doubtthe possibility of his being anything but unfortunate to the end of hiscareer. 

True, he has at last got his "rights" (which he would never have losthad he had a head instead of a sentimental bladder on his shoulders), the Villain is handcuffed, and he and the heroine have settled downcomfortably next door to the comic man. 

But this heavenly existence will never last. The stage hero was builtfor trouble, and he will be in it again in another month, you bet. They'll get up another mortgage for him on the "estates;" and he won'tknow, bless you, whether he really did sign it or whether he didn't, andout he will go. 

And he'll slop his name about to documents without ever looking to seewhat he's doing, and be let in for Lord knows what; and another wifewill turn up for him that he had married when a boy and forgotten allabout. 

And the next corpse that comes to the village he'll get mixed upwith--sure to--and have it laid to his door, and there'll be all the oldbusiness over again. 

No, our advice to the stage heroine is to get rid of the hero as soon aspossible, marry the villain, and go and live abroad somewhere where thecomic man won't come fooling around. 

She will be much happier. 

THE COMIC MAN. 

He follows the hero all over the world. This is rough on the hero. 

What makes him so gone on the hero is that when they were boys togetherthe hero used to knock him down and kick him. The comic man remembersthis with a glow of pride when he is grown up, and it makes him love thehero and determine to devote his life to him. 

He is a man of humble station--the comic man. The village blacksmith ora peddler. You never see a rich or aristocratic comic man on the stage. You can have your choice on the stage; you can be funny and of lowlyorigin, or you can be well-to-do and without any sense of humor. Peersand policemen are the people most utterly devoid of humor on the stage. 

The chief duty of the comic man's life is to make love to servant-girls, and they slap his face; but it does not discourage him; he seems to bemore smitten by them than ever. 

The comic man is happy under any fate, and he says funny things atfunerals and when the bailiffs are in the house or the hero is waitingto be hanged. 

This sort of man is rather trying in real life. In real life such a manwould probably be slaughtered to death and buried at an early period ofhis career, but on the stage they put up with him. 

He is very good, is the comic man. He can't bear villainy. To thwartvillainy is his life's ambition, and in this noble object fortune backshim up grandly. Bad people come and commit their murders and theftsright under his nose, so that he can denounce them in the last act. 

They never see him there, standing close beside them, while they areperforming these fearful crimes. 

It is marvelous how short-sighted people on the stage are. We alwaysthought that the young lady in real life was moderately good at notseeing folks she did not want to when they were standing straightin front of her, but her affliction in this direction is as nothingcompared with that of her brothers and sisters on the stage. 

These unfortunate people come into rooms where there are crowds ofpeople about--people that it is most important that they should see, andowing to not seeing whom they get themselves into fearful trouble, andthey never notice any of them. They talk to somebody opposite, and theycan't see a third person that is standing bang between the two of them. 

You might fancy they wore blinkers. 

Then, again, their hearing is so terribly weak. It really ought to beseen to. People talk and chatter at the very top of their voices closebehind them, and they never hear a word--don't know anybody's there, even. After it has been going on for half an hour, and the people "upstage" have made themselves hoarse with shouting, and somebody has beenboisterously murdered and all the furniture upset, then the people "downstage" "think they hear a noise. "

The comic man always rows with his wife if he is married or with hissweetheart if he is not married. They quarrel all day long. It must be atrying life, you would think, but they appear to like it. 

How the comic man lives and supports his wife (she looks as if it wantedsomething to support her, too) and family is always a mystery to us. Aswe have said, he is not a rich man and he never seems to earn any money. Sometimes he keeps a shop, and in the way he manages business it must bean expensive thing to keep, for he never charges anybody for anything, he is so generous. All his customers seem to be people more or less introuble, and he can't find it in his heart to ask them to pay for theirgoods under such distressing circumstances. 

He stuffs their basket full with twice as much as they came to buy, pushes their money back into their hands, and wipes away a tear. 

Why doesn't a comic man come and set up a grocery store in ourneighborhood?

When the shop does not prove sufficiently profitable (as under theabove-explained method sometimes happens to be the case) the comic man'swife seeks to add to the income by taking in lodgers. This is a bad moveon her part, for it always ends in the lodgers taking her in. The heroand heroine, who seem to have been waiting for something of the sort, immediately come and take possession of the whole house. 

Of course the comic man could not think of charging for mere boardand lodging the man who knocked him down when they were boys together!Besides, was not the heroine (now the hero's wife) the sweetest and theblithest girl in all the village of Deepdale? (They must have been agloomy band, the others!) How can any one with a human heart beneathhis bosom suggest that people like that should pay for their rest andwashing? The comic man is shocked at his wife for even thinking of sucha thing, and the end of it is that Mr. And Mrs. Hero live there for therest of the play rent free; coals, soap, candles, and hair-oil for thechild being provided for them on the same terms. 

The hero raises vague and feeble objections to this arrangement now andagain. He says he will not hear of such a thing, that he will stay nolonger to be a burden upon these honest folk, but will go forth unto theroadside and there starve. The comic man has awful work with him, butwins at last and persuades the noble fellow to stop on and give theplace another trial. 

When, a morning or so after witnessing one of these beautiful scenes, our own landlady knocks at our door and creates a disturbance over apaltry matter of three or four weeks' rent, and says she'll have hermoney or out we go that very day, and drifts slowly away down toward thekitchen, abusing us in a rising voice as she descends, then we think ofthese things and grow sad. 

It is the example of the people round him that makes the comic man sogenerous. Everybody is generous on the stage. They are giving away theirpurses all day long; that is the regulation "tip" on the stage--one'spurse. The moment you hear a tale of woe, you grab it out of yourpocket, slap it in to the woe-er's palm, grip his hand, dash away atear, and exit; you don't even leave yourself a 'bus fare home. You walkback quickly and get another purse. 

Middle-class people and others on the stage who are short of purseshave to content themselves with throwing about rolls of bank-notes andtipping servants with five-pound checks. Very stingy people on the stagehave been known to be so cussed mean as to give away mere sovereigns. 

But they are generally only villains or lords that descend to this sortof thing. Respectable stage folk never offer anything less than a purse. 

The recipient is very grateful on receiving the purse (he never looksinside) and thinks that Heaven ought to reward the donor. They get alot of work out of Heaven on the stage. Heaven does all the odd jobs forthem that they don't want to go to the trouble and expense of doing forthemselves. Heaven's chief duty on the stage is to see to the repaymentof all those sums of money that are given or lent to the good people. Itis generally requested to do this to the tune of a "thousand-fold"--anexorbitant rate when you come to think of it. 

Heaven is also expected to take care that the villain gets properlycursed, and to fill up its spare time by bringing misfortune upon thelocal landlord. It has to avenge everybody and to help all the goodpeople whenever they are in trouble. And they keep it going in thisdirection. 

And when the hero leaves for prison Heaven has to take care of his wifeand child till he comes out; and if this isn't a handful for it, wedon't know what would be!

Heaven on the stage is always on the side of the hero and heroine andagainst the police. 

Occasionally, of late years, the comic man has been a bad man, but youcan't hate him for it. What if he does ruin the hero and rob the heroineand help to murder the good old man? He does it all in such a genial, light-hearted spirit that it is not in one's heart to feel angrywith him. It is the way in which a thing is done that makes all thedifference. 

Besides, he can always round on his pal, the serious villain, at theend, and that makes it all right. 

The comic man is not a sportsman. If he goes out shooting, we know thatwhen he returns we shall hear that he has shot the dog. If he takes hisgirl out on the river he upsets her (literally we mean). The comic mannever goes out for a day's pleasure without coming home a wreck. 

If he merely goes to tea with his girl at her mother's, he swallows amuffin and chokes himself. 

The comic man is not happy in his married life, nor does it seem to usthat he goes the right way to be so. He calls his wife "his old Dutchclock, " "the old geyser, " and such like terms of endearment, andaddresses her with such remarks as "Ah, you old cat, " "You ugly oldnutmeg grater, " "You orangamatang, you!" etc. , etc. 

Well, you know that is not the way to make things pleasant about ahouse. 

Still, with all his faults we like the comic man. He is not always introuble and he does not make long speeches. 

Let us bless him. 

THE LAWYER. 

He is very old, and very long, and very thin. He has white hair. Hedresses in the costume of the last generation but seven. He has bushyeyebrows and is clean shaven. His chin itches considerably, so that hehas to be always scratching it. His favorite remark is "Ah!"

In real life we have heard of young solicitors, of foppish solicitors, of short solicitors; but on the stage they are always very thin and veryold. The youngest stage solicitor we ever remember to have seen lookedabout sixty--the oldest about a hundred and forty-five. 

By the bye, it is never very safe to judge people's ages on the stage bytheir personal appearance. We have known old ladies who looked seventy, if they were a day, turn out to be the mothers of boys of fourteen, while the middle-aged husband of the young wife generally gives one theidea of ninety. 

Again, what appears at first sight to be a comfortable-looking andeminently respectable elderly lady is often discovered to be, inreality, a giddy, girlish, and inexperienced young thing, the pride ofthe village or the darling of the regiment. 

So, too, an exceptionally stout and short-winded old gentleman, wholooks as if he had been living too well and taking too little exercisefor the last forty-five years, is not the heavy father, as you mightimagine if you judged from mere external evidence, but a wild, recklessboy. 

You would not think so to look at him, but his only faults are that heis so young and light-headed. There is good in him, however, and he willno doubt be steady enough when he grows up. All the young men of theneighborhood worship him and the girls love him. 

"Here he comes, " they say; "dear, dear old Jack--Jack, the darlingboy--the headstrong youth--Jack, the leader of our juvenilesports--Jack, whose childish innocence wins all hearts. Three cheers fordancing, bright-eyed Jack!"

On the other hand, ladies with the complexion of eighteen are, you learnas the story progresses, quite elderly women, the mothers of middle-agedheroes. 

The experienced observer of stage-land never jumps to conclusions fromwhat he sees. He waits till he is told things. 

The stage lawyer never has any office of his own. He transacts all hisbusiness at his clients' houses. He will travel hundreds of miles totell them the most trivial piece of legal information. 

It never occurs to him how much simpler it would be to write a letter. The item for "traveling expenses" in his bill of costs must be somethingenormous. 

There are two moments in the course of his client's career that thestage lawyer particularly enjoys. The first is when the client comesunexpectedly into a fortune; the second when he unexpectedly loses it. 

In the former case, upon learning the good news the stage lawyer at onceleaves his business and hurries off to the other end of the kingdomto bear the glad tidings. He arrives at the humble domicile of thebeneficiary in question, sends up his card, and is ushered into thefront parlor. He enters mysteriously and sits left--client sits right. An ordinary, common lawyer would come to the point at once, state thematter in a plain, business-like way, and trust that he might have thepleasure of representing, etc. , etc. ; but such simple methods are notthose of the stage lawyer. He looks at the client and says:

"You had a father. "

The client starts. How on earth did this calm, thin, keen-eyed old manin black know that he had a father? He shuffles and stammers, but thequiet, impenetrable lawyer fixes his cold, glassy eye on him, and he ishelpless. Subterfuge, he feels, is useless, and amazed, bewilderedat the knowledge of his most private affairs possessed by his strangevisitant, he admits the fact: he had a father. 

The lawyer smiles with a quiet smile of triumph and scratches his chin. 

"You had a mother, too, if I am informed correctly, " he continues. 

It is idle attempting to escape this man's supernatural acuteness, andthe client owns up to having had a mother also. 

From this the lawyer goes on to communicate to the client, as a greatsecret, the whole of his (the client's) history from his cradle upward, and also the history of his nearer relatives, and in less than half anhour from the old man's entrance, or say forty minutes at the outside, the client almost knows what the business is about. 

On the other occasion, when the client has lost his fortune, thestage lawyer is even still happier. He comes down himself to tell themisfortune (he would not miss the job for worlds), and he takes care tochoose the most unpropitious moment possible for breaking the news. Onthe eldest daughter's birthday, when there is a big party on, is hisfavorite time. He comes in about midnight and tells them just as theyare going down to supper. 

He has no idea of business hours, has the stage lawyer--to make thething as unpleasant as possible seems to be his only anxiety. 

If he cannot work it for a birthday, then he waits till there's awedding on, and gets up early in the morning on purpose to run down andspoil the show. To enter among a crowd of happy, joyous fellow-creaturesand leave them utterly crushed and miserable is the stage lawyer'shobby. 

The stage lawyer is a very talkative gentleman. He regards the tellingof his client's most private affairs to every stranger that he meetsas part of his professional duties. A good gossip with a few chanceacquaintances about the family secrets of his employers is food anddrink for the stage lawyer. 

They all go about telling their own and their friends' secrets toperfect strangers on the stage. Whenever two people have five minutes tospare on the stage they tell each other the story of their lives. "Sitdown and I will tell you the story of my life" is the stage equivalentfor the "Come and have a drink" of the outside world. 

The good stage lawyer has generally nursed the heroine on his knee whena baby (when she was a baby, we mean)--when she was only so high. Itseems to have been a part of his professional duties. The good stagelawyer also kisses all the pretty girls in the play and is expectedto chuck the housemaid under the chin. It is good to be a good stagelawyer. 

The good stage lawyer also wipes away a tear when sad things happen; andhe turns away to do this and blows his nose, and says he thinks he hasa fly in his eye. This touching trait in his character is always held ingreat esteem by the audience and is much applauded. 

The good stage lawyer is never by any chance a married man. (Few goodmen are, so we gather from our married lady friends. ) He loved in earlylife the heroine's mother. That "sainted woman" (tear and nose business)died and is now among the angels--the gentleman who did marry her, bythe bye, is not quite so sure about this latter point, but the lawyer isfixed on the idea. 

In stage literature of a frivolous nature the lawyer is a very differentindividual. In comedy he is young, he possesses chambers, and he ismarried (there is no doubt about this latter fact); and his wife and hismother-in-law spend most of the day in his office and make the dull oldplace quite lively for him. 

He only has one client. She is a nice lady and affable, but herantecedents are doubtful, and she seems to be no better than she oughtto be--possibly worse. But anyhow she is the sole business that the poorfellow has--is, in fact, his only source of income, and might, one wouldthink, under such circumstances be accorded a welcome by his family. Buthis wife and his mother-in-law, on the contrary, take a violent disliketo her, and the lawyer has to put her in the coal-scuttle or lock herup in the safe whenever he hears either of these female relatives of hiscoming up the stairs. 

We should not care to be the client of a farcical comedy stage lawyer. Legal transactions are trying to the nerves under the most favorablecircumstances; conducted by a farcical stage lawyer, the business wouldbe too exciting for us. 

THE ADVENTURESS. 

She sits on a table and smokes a cigarette. A cigarette on the stage isalways the badge of infamy. 

In real life the cigarette is usually the hall-mark of the particularlymild and harmless individual. It is the dissipation of the Y. M. C. A. ; theinnocent joy of the pure-hearted boy long ere the demoralizing influenceof our vaunted civilization has dragged him down into the depths of theshort clay. 

But behind the cigarette on the stage lurks ever black-hearted villainyand abandoned womanhood. 

The adventuress is generally of foreign extraction. They do not make badwomen in England--the article is entirely of continental manufactureand has to be imported. She speaks English with a charming little Frenchaccent, and she makes up for this by speaking French with a good soundEnglish one. 

She seems a smart business woman, and she would probably get on verywell if it were not for her friends and relations. Friends and relationsare a trying class of people even in real life, as we all know, butthe friends and relations of the stage adventuress are a particularlyirritating lot. They never leave her; never does she get a day or anhour off from them. Wherever she goes, there the whole tribe goes withher. 

They all go with her in a body when she calls on her young man, and itis as much as she can do to persuade them to go into the next room evenfor five minutes, and give her a chance. When she is married they comeand live with her. 

They know her dreadful secret and it keeps them in comfort for years. Knowing somebody's secret seems, on the stage, to be one of the mostprofitable and least exhausting professions going. 

She is fond of married life, is the adventuress, and she goes in for itpretty extensively. She has husbands all over the globe, most of themin prison, but they escape and turn up in the last act and spoil allthe poor girl's plans. That is so like husbands--no consideration, nothought for their poor wives. They are not a prepossessing lot, either, those early husbands of hers. What she could have seen in them to induceher to marry them is indeed a mystery. 

The adventuress dresses magnificently. Where she gets the money from wenever could understand, for she and her companions are always more orless complaining of being "stone broke. " Dressmakers must be a trustingpeople where she comes from. 

The adventuress is like the proverbial cat as regards the number oflives she is possessed of. You never know when she is really dead. Mostpeople like to die once and have done with it, but the adventuress, after once or twice trying it, seems to get quite to like it, and goeson giving way to it, and then it grows upon her until she can't helpherself, and it becomes a sort of craving with her. 

This habit of hers is, however, a very trying one for her friends andhusbands--it makes things so uncertain. Something ought to be done tobreak her of it. Her husbands, on hearing that she is dead, go intoraptures and rush off and marry other people, and then just as theyare starting off on their new honeymoon up she crops again, as fresh aspaint. It is really most annoying. 

For ourselves, were we the husband of a stage adventuress we shouldnever, after what we have seen of the species, feel quite justified inbelieving her to be dead unless we had killed and buried her ourselves;and even then we should be more easy in our minds if we could arrange tosit on her grave for a week or so afterward. These women are so artful!

But it is not only the adventuress who will persist in coming to lifeagain every time she is slaughtered. They all do it on the stage. Theyare all so unreliable in this respect. It must be most disheartening tothe murderers. 

And then, again, it is something extraordinary, when you come to thinkof it, what a tremendous amount of killing some of them can stand andstill come up smiling in the next act, not a penny the worse for it. They get stabbed, and shot, and thrown over precipices thousands of feethigh and, bless you, it does them good--it is like a tonic to them. 

As for the young man that is coming home to see his girl, you simplycan't kill him. Achilles was a summer rose compared with him. Nature andmankind have not sufficient materials in hand as yet to kill thatman. Science has but the strength of a puling babe against hisinvulnerability. You can waste your time on earthquakes and shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions, floods, explosions, railway accidents, and such likesort of things, if you are foolish enough to do so; but it is no goodyour imagining that anything of the kind can hurt him, because it can't. 

There will be thousands of people killed, thousands in each instance, but one human being will always escape, and that one human being will bethe stage young man who is coming home to see his girl. 

He is forever being reported as dead, but it always turns out to beanother fellow who was like him or who had on his (the young man's) hat. He is bound to be out of it, whoever else may be in. 

"If I had been at my post that day, " he explains to his sobbing mother, "I should have been blown up, but the Providence that watches over goodmen had ordained that I should be laying blind drunk in Blogg's saloonat the time the explosion took place, and so the other engineer, who hadbeen doing my work when it was his turn to be off, was killed along withthe whole of the crew. "

"Ah, thank Heaven, thank Heaven for that!" ejaculates the pious oldlady, and the comic man is so overcome with devout joy that he has torelieve his overstrained heart by drawing his young woman on one sideand grossly insulting her. 

All attempts to kill this young man ought really to be given up now. Thejob has been tried over and over again by villains and bad people of allkinds, but no one has ever succeeded. There has been an amount of energyand ingenuity expended in seeking to lay up that one man which, properlyutilized, might have finished off ten million ordinary mortals. It issad to think of so much wasted effort. 

He, the young man coming home to see his girl, need never take aninsurance ticket or even buy a _Tit Bits_. It would be needlessexpenditure in his case. 

On the other hand, and to make matters equal, as it were, there are somestage people so delicate that it is next door to impossible to keep themalive. 

The inconvenient husband is a most pathetic example of this. Medicalscience is powerless to save that man when the last act comes round;indeed, we doubt whether medical science, in its present state ofdevelopment, could even tell what is the matter with him or why he diesat all. He looks healthy and robust enough and nobody touches him, yetdown he drops, without a word of warning, stone-dead, in the middle ofthe floor--he always dies in the middle of the floor. Some folks liketo die in bed, but stage people don't. They like to die on the floor. Weall have our different tastes. 

The adventuress herself is another person who dies with remarkable ease. We suppose in her case it is being so used to it that makes her so quickand clever at it. There is no lingering illness and doctors' bills andupsetting of the whole household arrangements about her method. One walkround the stage and the thing is done. 

All bad characters die quickly on the stage. Good characters take a longtime over it, and have a sofa down in the drawing-room to do it on, andhave sobbing relatives and good old doctors fooling around them, and cansmile and forgive everybody. Bad stage characters have to do the wholejob, dying speech and all, in about ten seconds, and do it withall their clothes on into the bargain, which must make it mostuncomfortable. 

It is repentance that kills off the bad people in plays. They alwaysrepent, and the moment they repent they die. Repentance on the stageseems to be one of the most dangerous things a man can be taken with. Our advice to stage wicked people would undoubtedly be, "Never repent. If you value your life, don't repent. It always means sudden death!"

To return to our adventuress. She is by no means a bad woman. There ismuch good in her. This is more than proved by the fact that she learnsto love the hero before she dies; for no one but a really good womancapable of extraordinary patience and gentleness could ever, we areconvinced, grow to feel any other sentiment for that irritating ass, than a desire to throw bricks at him. 

The stage adventuress would be a much better woman, too, if it were notfor the heroine. The adventuress makes the most complete arrangementsfor being noble and self-sacrificing--that is, for going away and nevercoming back, and is just about to carry them out, when the heroine, whohas a perfect genius for being in the wrong place at the right time, comes in and spoils it all. No stage adventuress can be good while theheroine is about. The sight of the heroine rouses every bad feeling inher breast. 

We can sympathize with her in this respect. The heroine often affectsourselves in precisely the same way. 

There is a good deal to be said in favor of the adventuress. True, shepossesses rather too much sarcasm and repartee to make things quiteagreeable round the domestic hearth, and when she has got all herclothes on there is not much room left in the place for anybody else;but taken on the whole she is decidedly attractive. She has grit andgo in her. She is alive. She can do something to help herself besidescalling for "George. "

She has not got a stage child--if she ever had one, she has left it onsomebody else's doorstep which, presuming there was no water handy todrown it in, seems to be about the most sensible thing she could havedone with it. She is not oppressively good. 

She never wants to be "unhanded" or "let to pass. "

She is not always being shocked or insulted by people telling her thatthey love her; she does not seem to mind it if they do. She is notalways fainting, and crying, and sobbing, and wailing, and moaning, likethe good people in the play are. 

Oh, they do have an unhappy time of it--the good people in plays! Thenshe is the only person in the piece who can sit on the comic man. 

We sometimes think it would be a fortunate thing--for him--if theyallowed her to marry and settle down quietly with the hero. She mightmake a man of him in time. 

THE SERVANT-GIRL. 

There are two types of servant-girl to be met with on the stage. This isan unusual allowance for one profession. 

There is the lodging-house slavey. She has a good heart and asmutty face and is always dressed according to the latest fashion inscarecrows. Her leading occupation is the cleaning of boots. She cleansboots all over the house, at all hours of the day. She comes andsits down on the hero's breakfast-table and cleans them over the poorfellow's food. She comes into the drawing-room cleaning boots. 

She has her own method of cleaning them, too. She rubs off the mud, putson the blacking, and polishes up all with the same brush. They take anenormous amount of polishing. She seems to do nothing else all day longbut walk about shining one boot, and she breathes on it and rubs ittill you wonder there is any leather left, yet it never seems to get anybrighter, nor, indeed, can you expect it to, for when you look close yousee it is a patent-leather boot that she has been throwing herself awayupon all this time. 

Somebody has been having a lark with the poor girl. 

The lodging-house slavey brushes her hair with the boot brush and blacksthe end of her nose with it. 

We were acquainted with a lodging-house slavey once--a real one, wemean. She was the handmaiden at a house in Bloomsbury where we once hungout. She was untidy in her dress, it is true, but she had not quite thatcastaway and gone-to-sleep-in-a-dust-bin appearance that we, an earneststudent of the drama, felt she ought to present, and we questioned herone day on the subject. 

"How is it, Sophronia, " we said, "that you distantly resemble a humanbeing instead of giving one the idea of an animated rag-shop? Don't youever polish your nose with the blacking-brush, or rub coal into yourhead, or wash your face in treacle, or put skewers into your hair, oranything of that sort, like they do on the stage?"

She said: "Lord love you, what should I want to go and be a bally idiotlike that for?"

And we have not liked to put the question elsewhere since then. 

The other type of servant-girl on the stage--the villa servant-girl--isa very different personage. She is a fetching little thing, dressesbewitchingly, and is always clean. Her duties are to dust the legs ofthe chairs in the drawing-room. That is the only work she ever has todo, but it must be confessed she does that thoroughly. She never comesinto the room without dusting the legs of these chairs, and she duststhem again before she goes out. 

If anything ought to be free from dust in a stage house, it should bethe legs of the drawing-room chairs. 

She is going to marry the man-servant, is the stage servant-girl, assoon as they have saved up sufficient out of their wages to buy a hotel. They think they will like to keep a hotel. They don't understand a bitabout the business, which we believe is a complicated one, but this doesnot trouble them in the least. 

They quarrel a good deal over their love-making, do the stageservant-girl and her young man, and they always come into thedrawing-room to do it. They have got the kitchen, and there is thegarden (with a fountain and mountains in the background--you can seeit through the window), but no! no place in or about the house is goodenough for them to quarrel in except the drawing-room. They quarrelthere so vigorously that it even interferes with the dusting of thechair-legs. 

She ought not to be long in saving up sufficient to marry on, forthe generosity of people on the stage to the servants there makes oneseriously consider the advisability of ignoring the unremunerativeprofessions of ordinary life and starting a new and more promisingcareer as a stage servant. 

No one ever dreams of tipping the stage servant with less than asovereign when they ask her if her mistress is at home or give her aletter to post, and there is quite a rush at the end of the piece tostuff five-pound notes into her hand. The good old man gives her ten. 

The stage servant is very impudent to her mistress, and the master--hefalls in love with her and it does upset the house so. 

Sometimes the servant-girl is good and faithful, and then she is Irish. All good servant-girls on the stage are Irish. 

All the male visitors are expected to kiss the stage servant-girl whenthey come into the house, and to dig her in the ribs and to say: "Do youknow, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice girl--click. " They alwayssay this, and she likes it. 

Many years ago, when we were young, we thought we would see if thingswere the same off the stage, and the next time we called at a certainfriend's house we tried this business on. 

She wasn't quite so dazzlingly beautiful as they are on the stage, butwe passed that. She showed us up into the drawing-room, and then saidshe would go and tell her mistress we were there. 

We felt this was the time to begin. We skipped between her and the door. We held our hat in front of us, cocked our head on one side, and said:"Don't go! don't go!"

The girl seemed alarmed. We began to get a little nervous ourselves, butwe had begun it and we meant to go through with it. 

We said, "Do you know, Jane" (her name wasn't Jane, but that wasn't ourfault), "do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice girl, "and we said "click, " and dug her in the ribs with our elbow, and thenchucked her under the chin. The whole thing seemed to fall flat. Therewas nobody there to laugh or applaud. We wished we hadn't done it. Itseemed stupid when you came to think of it. We began to feel frightened. The business wasn't going as we expected; but we screwed up our courageand went on. 

We put on the customary expression of comic imbecility and beckoned thegirl to us. We have never seen this fail on the stage. 

But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa and screamed"Help!"

We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us out inour plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted that wehad ever begun this job and heartily wished ourselves out of it. But itappeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half-way through, and we made a rush to get it over. 

We chivvied the girl round the sofa and caught her near the door andkissed her. She scratched our face, yelled police, murder, and fire, andfled from the room. 

Our friend came in almost immediately. He said:

"I say, J. , old man, are you drunk?"

We told him no, that we were only a student of the drama. His wife thenentered in a towering passion. She didn't ask us if we were drunk. Shesaid:

"How dare you come here in this state!"

We endeavored unsuccessfully to induce her to believe that we weresober, and we explained that our course of conduct was what was alwayspursued on the stage. 

She said she didn't care what was done on the stage, it wasn't goingto be pursued in her house; and that if her husband's friends couldn'tbehave as gentlemen they had better stop away. 

The following morning we received a letter from a firm of solicitorsin Lincoln's Inn with reference, so they put it, to the brutal andunprovoked assault committed by us on the previous afternoon upon theperson of their client, Miss Matilda Hemmings. The letter stated thatwe had punched Miss Hemmings in the side, struck her under the chin, andafterward, seizing her as she was leaving the room, proceeded to commita gross assault, into the particulars of which it was needless for themto enter at greater length. 

It added that if we were prepared to render an ample written apologyand to pay 50 pounds compensation, they would advise their client, Miss Matilda Hemmings, to allow the matter to drop; otherwise criminalproceedings would at once be commenced against us. 

We took the letter to our own solicitors and explained the circumstancesto them. They said it seemed to be a very sad case, but advised us topay the 50 pounds, and we borrowed the money and did so. 

Since then we have lost faith, somehow, in the British drama as a guideto the conduct of life. 

THE CHILD. 

It is nice and quiet and it talks prettily. 

We have come across real infants now and then in the course of visits tomarried friends; they have been brought to us from outlying parts of thehouse and introduced to us for our edification; and we have found themgritty and sticky. Their boots have usually been muddy, and they havewiped them up against our new trousers. And their hair has suggested theidea that they have been standing on their heads in the dust-bin. 

And they have talked to us--but not prettily, not at all--rather rude weshould call it. 

But the stage child is very different. It is clean and tidy. You cantouch it anywhere and nothing comes off. Its face glows with soap andwater. From the appearance of its hands it is evident that mud-pies andtar are joys unknown to it. As for its hair, there is something uncannyabout its smoothness and respectability. Even its boot-laces are doneup. 

We have never seen anything like the stage child outside a theaterexcepting one--that was on the pavement in front of a tailor's shopin Tottenham Court Road. He stood on a bit of round wood, and it wasfifteen and nine, his style. 

We thought in our ignorance prior to this that there could not beanything in the world like the stage child, but you see we weremistaken. 

The stage child is affectionate to its parents and its nurse and isrespectful in its demeanor toward those whom Providence has placed inauthority over it; and so far it is certainly much to be preferred tothe real article. It speaks of its male and female progenitors as"dear, dear papa" and "dear, dear mamma, " and it refers to its nurse as"darling nursey. " We are connected with a youthful child ourselves--areal one--a nephew. He alludes to his father (when his father isnot present) as "the old man, " and always calls the nurse "oldnut-crackers. " Why cannot they make real children who say "dear, dearmamma" and "dear, dear papa?"

The stage child is much superior to the live infant in every way. Thestage child does not go rampaging about a house and screeching andyelling till nobody knows whether they are on their heads or theirheels. 

A stage child does not get up at five o'clock in the morning to practiceplaying on a penny whistle. A stage child never wants a bicycle anddrives you mad about it. A stage child does not ask twenty complicatedquestions a minute about things that you don't understand, and thenwind up by asking why you don't seem to know anything, and why wouldn'tanybody teach you anything when you were a little boy. 

The stage child does not wear a hole in the seat of its knickerbockersand have to have a patch let in. The stage child comes downstairs on itsfeet. 

The stage child never brings home six other children to play at horsesin the front garden, and then wants to know if they can all come in totea. The stage child never has the wooping-cough, and the measles, andevery other disease that it can lay its hands on, and be laid up withthem one after the other and turn the house upside down. 

The stage child's department in the scheme of life is to harrow up itsmother's feelings by ill-timed and uncalled-for questions about itsfather. It always wants to know, before a roomful of people, where "dearpapa" is, and why he has left dear mamma; when, as all the guests know, the poor man is doing his two years' hard or waiting to be hanged. Itmakes everybody so uncomfortable. 

It is always harrowing up somebody--the stage child; it really oughtnot to be left about as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother itfishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly severedforever from her lover, and asks her in a high falsetto voice why shedoesn't get married, and prattles to her about love, and domesticbliss, and young men, and any other subject it can think of particularlycalculated to lacerate the poor girl's heart until her brain nearlygives way. 

After that it runs amuck up and down the whole play and makes everybodysit up all round. It asks eminently respectable old maids if theywouldn't like to have a baby; and it wants to know why bald-headed oldmen have left off wearing hair, and why other old gentlemen have rednoses and if they were always that color. 

In some plays it so happens that the less said about the origin andsource of the stage child the better; and in such cases nothing willappear so important to that contrary brat as to know, in the middle ofan evening-party, who its father was!

Everybody loves the stage child. They catch it up in their bosoms everyother minute and weep over it. They take it in turns to do this. 

Nobody--on the stage, we mean--ever has enough of the stage child. Nobody ever tells the stage child to "shut up" or to "get out of this. "Nobody ever clumps the stage child over the head. 

When the real child goes to the theater it must notice these things andwish it were a stage child. 

The stage child is much admired by the audience. Its pathos makes themweep; its tragedy thrills them; its declamation--as for instance when ittakes the center of the stage and says it will kill the wicked man, andthe police, and everybody who hurts its mar--stirs them like a trumpetnote; and its light comedy is generally held to be the most trulyhumorous thing in the whole range of dramatic art. 

But there are some people so strangely constituted that they do notappreciate the stage child; they do not comprehend its uses; they do notunderstand its beauties. We should not be angry with them. We should therather pity them. 

We ourselves had a friend once who suffered from this misfortune. He wasa married man, and Providence had been very gracious, very good to him:he had been blessed with eleven children, and they were all growing upwell and strong. 

The "baby" was eleven weeks old, and then came the twins, who weregetting on for fifteen months and were cutting their double teethnicely. The youngest girl was three; there were five boys aged seven, eight, nine, ten, and twelve respectively--good enough lads, but--well, there, boys will be boys, you know; we were just the same ourselves whenwe were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant girls, as theirmother said; the only pity was that they would quarrel so with eachother. 

We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. They were so full ofenergy and dash. 

Our friend was very much out of sorts one evening when we called on him. It was holiday-time and wet weather. He had been at home all day, and sohad all the children. He was telling his wife when we entered the roomthat if the holidays were to last much longer and those twins did nothurry up and get their teeth quickly, he should have to go away and jointhe County Council. He could not stand the racket. 

His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She was surebetter-hearted children no man could have. 

Our friend said he didn't care a straw about their hearts. It was theirlegs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy. 

He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it for abit, or he should go mad. 

He proposed a theater, and we accordingly made our way toward theStrand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could nottell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He said heloved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to have toomuch of anything, however much you liked it, and that he had come to theconclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was enough for any one. 

He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child untilhe got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things as childrenin the world. 

We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theater we came to. The curtain went up, and on the stage was a small child standing in itsnightshirt and screaming for its mother. 

Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed. 

We went a little further and dropped into another theater. 

Here there were two children on the stage. Some grown-up people werestanding round them listening, in respectful attitudes, while thechildren talked. They appeared to be lecturing about something. 

Again we fled, swearing, and made our way to a third theater. Theywere all children there. It was somebody or other's Children's Companyperforming an opera, or pantomime, or something of that sort. 

Our friend said he would not venture into another theater. He said hehad heard there were places called music-halls, and he begged us to takehim to one of these and not to tell his wife. 

We inquired of a policeman and found that there really were such places, and we took him into one. 

The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a horizontalbar. 

Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying andcursing, but we restrained him. We assured him that he would really seea grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys and alsotheir little sister on a bicycle and waited for the next item. 

It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in fourteendifferent costumes, and we once more fled. 

Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then; he feltsure he should kill the twins if he did. He pondered for awhile, andthen he thought he would go and hear some music. He said he thought alittle music would soothe and ennoble him--make him feel more like aChristian than he did at that precise moment. 

We were near St. James' Hall, so we went in there. 

The hall was densely crowded, and we had great difficulty in forcing ourway to our seats. We reached them at length, and then turned our eyestoward the orchestra. 

"The marvelous boy pianist--only ten years old!" was giving a recital. 

Then our friend rose and said he thought he would give it up and gohome. 

We asked him if he would like to try any other place of amusement, buthe said "No. " He said that when you came to think of it, it seemed awaste of money for a man with eleven children of his own to go about toplaces of entertainment nowadays. 

THE COMIC LOVERS. 

Oh, they are funny! The comic lovers' mission in life is to serve asa sort of "relief" to the misery caused the audience by the othercharacters in the play; and all that is wanted now is something thatwill be a relief to the comic lovers. 

They have nothing to do with the play, but they come on immediatelyafter anything very sad has happened and make love. This is why we watchsad scenes on the stage with such patience. We are not eager for themto be got over. Maybe they are very uninteresting scenes, as well as sadones, and they make us yawn; but we have no desire to see them hurriedthrough. The longer they take the better pleased we are: we know thatwhen they are finished the comic lovers will come on. 

They are always very rude to each other, the comic lovers. Everybody ismore or less rude and insulting to every body else on the stage; theycall it repartee there! We tried the effect of a little stage "repartee"once upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn't afterward. It was too subtle for them. They summoned us before a magistrate for"using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace. " We werefined 2 pounds and costs!

They are more lenient to "wit and humor" on the stage, and know howto encourage the art of vituperation. But the comic lovers carry thepractice almost to excess. They are more than rude--they are abusive. They insult each other from morning to night. What their married lifewill be like we shudder to think!

In the various slanging matches and bullyragging competitions which formtheir courtship it is always the maiden that is most successful. Against her merry flow of invective and her girlish wealth of offensivepersonalities the insolence and abuse of her boyish adorer cannot standfor one moment. 

To give an idea of how the comic lovers woo, we perhaps cannot do betterthan subjoin the following brief example:

 _SCENE: Main thoroughfare in populous district of London. Time: Noon. Not a soul to be seen anywhere. _

 _Enter comic loveress R. , walking in the middle of the road. _

 _Enter comic lover L. , also walking in the middle of the road. _

 _They neither see the other until they bump against each other in the center. _

HE. Why, Jane! Who'd a' thought o' meeting you here!

SHE. You evidently didn't--stoopid!

HE. Halloo! got out o' bed the wrong side again? I say, Jane, if you goon like that you'll never get a man to marry you. 

SHE. So I thought when I engaged myself to you. 

HE. Oh! come, Jane, don't be hard. 

SHE. Well, one of us must be hard. You're soft enough. 

HE. Yes, I shouldn't want to marry you if I weren't. Ha! ha! ha!

SHE. Oh, you gibbering idiot! (_Said archly. _)

HE. So glad I am. We shall make a capital match (_attempts to kissher_). 

SHE (_slipping away_). Yes, and you'll find I'm a match that can strike(_fetches him a violent blow over the side if the head_). 

HE (_holding his jaw--in a literal sense, we mean_). I can't helpfeeling smitten by her. 

SHE. Yes, I'm a bit of a spanker, ain't I?

HE. Spanker. I call you a regular stunner. You've nearly made me silly. 

SHE (_laughing playfully_). No, nature did that for you, Joe, long ago. 

HE. Ah, well, you've made me smart enough now, you boss-eyed old cow, you!

SHE. Cow! am I? Ah, I suppose that's what makes me so fond of a calf, you German sausage on legs! You--

HE. Go along. Your mother brought you up on sour milk. 

SHE. Yah! They weaned you on thistles, didn't they?

And so on, with such like badinage do they hang about in the middle ofthat road, showering derision and contumely upon each other for full tenminutes, when, with one culminating burst of mutual abuse, they go offtogether fighting and the street is left once more deserted. 

It is very curious, by the bye, how deserted all public places becomewhenever a stage character is about. It would seem as though ordinarycitizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villainsto have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strandentirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer'safternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage. 

As for Trafalgar Square, the hero always chooses that spot when he wantsto get away from the busy crowd and commune in solitude with his ownbitter thoughts; and the good old lawyer leaves his office and goesthere to discuss any very delicate business over which he particularlydoes not wish to be disturbed. 

And they all make speeches there to an extent sufficient to have turnedthe hair of the late lamented Sir Charles Warren White with horror. Butit is all right, because there is nobody near to hear them. As far asthe eye can reach, not a living thing is to be seen. NorthumberlandAvenue, the Strand, and St. Martin's Lane are simply a wilderness. The only sign of life about is a 'bus at the top of Whitehall, and itappears to be blocked. 

How it has managed to get blocked we cannot say. It has the whole roadto itself, and is, in fact, itself the only traffic for miles round. Yetthere it sticks for hours. The police make no attempt to move it on andthe passengers seem quite contented. 

The Thames Embankment is an even still more lonesome and desolate part. Wounded (stage) spirits fly from the haunts of men and, leaving thehard, cold world far, far behind them, go and die in peace on the ThamesEmbankment. And other wanderers, finding their skeletons afterward, burythem there and put up rude crosses over the graves to mark the spot. 

The comic lovers are often very young, and when people on the stage areyoung they _are_ young. He is supposed to be about sixteen and she isfifteen. But they both talk as if they were not more than seven. 

In real life "boys" of sixteen know a thing or two, we have generallyfound. The average "boy" of sixteen nowadays usually smokes cavendishand does a little on the Stock Exchange or makes a book; and as forlove! he has quite got over it by that age. On the stage, however, thenew-born babe is not in it for innocence with the boy lover of sixteen. 

So, too, with the maiden. Most girls of fifteen off the stage, so ourexperience goes, know as much as there is any actual necessity for themto know, Mr. Gilbert notwithstanding; but when we see a young lady offifteen on the stage we wonder where her cradle is. 

The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that thehero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make lovein, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit aboutin picturesque attitudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to doit out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in thecenter, and moonlight. 

The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all thetime, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrowrooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire. 

And there is always a tremendous row going on in the house when thecomic lovers are making love. Somebody always seems to be putting uppictures in the next room, and putting them up boisterously, too, sothat the comic lovers have to shout at each other. 

THE PEASANTS. 

They are so clean. We have seen peasantry off the stage, and ithas presented an untidy--occasionally a disreputable andunwashed--appearance; but the stage peasant seems to spend all his wageson soap and hair-oil. 

They are always round the corner--or rather round the two corners--andthey come on in a couple of streams and meet in the center; and whenthey are in their proper position they smile. 

There is nothing like the stage peasants' smile in this world--nothingso perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile. 

They are so happy. They don't look it, but we know they are because theysay so. If you don't believe them, they dance three steps to the rightand three steps to the left back again. They can't help it. It isbecause they are so happy. 

When they are more than usually rollicking they stand in a semicircle, with their hands on each other's shoulders, and sway from side to side, trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are simplybursting with joy. 

Stage peasants never have any work to do. 

Sometimes we see them going to work, sometimes coming home from work, but nobody has ever seen them actually at work. They could not afford towork--it would spoil their clothes. 

They are very sympathetic, are stage peasants. They never seem to haveany affairs of their own to think about, but they make up for this bytaking a three-hundred-horse-power interest in things in which they haveno earthly concern. 

What particularly rouses them is the heroine's love affairs. They couldlisten to them all day. 

They yearn to hear what she said to him and to be told what he repliedto her, and they repeat it to each other. 

In our own love-sick days we often used to go and relate to variouspeople all the touching conversations that took place between ourlady-love and ourselves; but our friends never seemed to get excitedover it. On the contrary, a casual observer might even have been ledto the idea that they were bored by our recital. And they had trains tocatch and men to meet before we had got a quarter through the job. 

Ah, how often in those days have we yearned for the sympathy of a stagepeasantry, who would have crowded round us, eager not to miss one wordof the thrilling narrative, who would have rejoiced with us with anencouraging laugh, and have condoled with us with a grieved "Oh, " andwho would have gone off, when we had had enough of them, singing aboutit. 

By the way, this is a very beautiful trait in the character of the stagepeasantry, their prompt and unquestioning compliance with the slightestwish of any of the principals. 

"Leave me, friends, " says the heroine, beginning to make preparationsfor weeping, and before she can turn round they are clean gone--onelot to the right, evidently making for the back entrance of thepublic-house, and the other half to the left, where they visibly hidethemselves behind the pump and wait till somebody else wants them. 

The stage peasantry do not talk much, their strong point being tolisten. When they cannot get any more information about the state of theheroine's heart, they like to be told long and complicated stories aboutwrongs done years ago to people that they never heard of. They seem tobe able to grasp and understand these stories with ease. This makes theaudience envious of them. 

When the stage peasantry do talk, however, they soon make up for losttime. They start off all together with a suddenness that nearly knocksyou over. 

They all talk. Nobody listens. Watch any two of them. They are bothtalking as hard as they can go. They have been listening quite enoughto other people: you can't expect them to listen to each other. But theconversation under such conditions must be very trying. 

And then they flirt so sweetly! so idyllicly!

It has been our privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has alwaysstruck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair--makes one think, somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow--but on the stage itis so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so muchtidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs--sucha silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such abeautiful waistcoat! how can she help but love him? And he is so tenderand devoted and holds her by the waist; and she slips round and comes upthe other side. Oh, it is so bewitching!

The stage peasantry like to do their love-making as much in public aspossible. Some people fancy a place all to themselves for this sortof thing--where nobody else is about. We ourselves do. But the stagepeasant is more sociably inclined. Give him the village green, justoutside the public-house, or the square on market-day to do his spooningin. 

They are very faithful, are stage peasants. No jilting, no fickleness, no breach of promise. If the gentleman in pink walks out with the ladyin blue in the first act, pink and blue will be married in the end. Hesticks to her all through and she sticks to him. 

Girls in yellow may come and go, girls in green may laugh and dance--thegentleman in pink heeds them not. Blue is his color, and he never leavesit. He stands beside it, he sits beside it. He drinks with her, hesmiles with her, he laughs with her, he dances with her, he comes onwith her, he goes off with her. 

When the time comes for talking he talks to her and only her, and shetalks to him and only him. Thus there is no jealousy, no quarreling. Butwe should prefer an occasional change ourselves. 

There are no married people in stage villages and no children(consequently, of course-happy village! oh, to discover it and spend amonth there!). There are just the same number of men as there are womenin all stage villages, and they are all about the same age and eachyoung man loves some young woman. But they never marry. 

They talk a lot about it, but they never do it. The artful beggars! Theysee too much what it's like among the principals. 

The stage peasant is fond of drinking, and when he drinks he likes tolet you know he is drinking. None of your quiet half-pint inside thebar for him. He likes to come out in the street and sing about it and dotricks with it, such as turning it topsy-turvy over his head. 

Notwithstanding all this he is moderate, mind you. You can't say hetakes too much. One small jug of ale among forty is his usual allowance. 

He has a keen sense of humor and is easily amused. There is somethingalmost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of laughter oversuch very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy a real joke!One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however, probably kill him. One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile. He is so good, so child-like, so unworldly. He realizes one's ideal ofChristianity. 

THE GOOD OLD MAN. 

He has lost his wife. But he knows where she is--among the angels!

She isn't all gone, because the heroine has her hair. "Ah, you've gotyour mother's hair, " says the good old man, feeling the girl's head allover as she kneels beside him. Then they all wipe away a tear. 

The people on the stage think very highly of the good old man, but theydon't encourage him much after the first act. He generally dies in thefirst act. 

If he does not seem likely to die they murder him. 

He is a most unfortunate old gentleman. Anything he is mixed up in seemsbound to go wrong. If he is manager or director of a bank, smash it goesbefore even one act is over. His particular firm is always on the vergeof bankruptcy. We have only to be told that he has put all his savingsinto a company--no matter how sound and promising an affair it mayalways have been and may still seem--to know that that company is a"goner. "

No power on earth can save it after once the good old man has become ashareholder. 

If we lived in stage-land and were asked to join any financial scheme, our first question would be:

"Is the good old man in it?" If so, that would decide us. 

When the good old man is a trustee for any one he can battle againstadversity much longer. He is a plucky old fellow, and while that trustmoney lasts he keeps a brave heart and fights on boldly. It is not untilhe has spent the last penny of it that he gives way. 

It then flashes across the old man's mind that his motives for havinglived in luxury upon that trust money for years may possibly bemisunderstood. The world--the hollow, heartless world--will call it aswindle and regard him generally as a precious old fraud. 

This idea quite troubles the good old man. 

But the world really ought not to blame him. No one, we are sure, couldbe more ready and willing to make amends (when found out); and to putmatters right he will cheerfully sacrifice his daughter's happiness andmarry her to the villain. 

The villain, by the way, has never a penny to bless himself with, andcannot even pay his own debts, let alone helping anybody else out of ascrape. But the good old man does not think of this. 

Our own personal theory, based upon a careful comparison ofsimilarities, is that the good old man is in reality the stage herogrown old. There is something about the good old man's chuckle-headedsimplicity, about his helpless imbecility, and his irritating damtomfoolishness that is strangely suggestive of the hero. 

He is just the sort of old man that we should imagine the hero woulddevelop into. 

We may, of course, be wrong; but that is our idea. 

THE IRISHMAN. 

He says "Shure" and "Bedad" and in moments of exultation "Beghorra. "That is all the Irish he knows. 

He is very poor, but scrupulously honest. His great ambition is to payhis rent, and he is devoted to his landlord. 

He is always cheerful and always good. We never knew a bad Irishman onthe stage. Sometimes a stage Irishman seems to be a bad man--such as the"agent" or the "informer"--but in these cases it invariably turns out inthe end that this man was all along a Scotchman, and thus what had beena mystery becomes clear and explicable. 

The stage Irishman is always doing the most wonderful things imaginable. We do not see him do those wonderful things. He does them when nobody isby and tells us all about them afterward: that is how we know of them. 

We remember on one occasion, when we were young and somewhatinexperienced, planking our money down and going into a theater solelyand purposely to see the stage Irishman do the things he was depicted asdoing on the posters outside. 

They were really marvelous, the things he did on that poster. 

In the right-hand upper corner he appeared running across country on allfours, with a red herring sticking out from his coat-tails, while farbehind came hounds and horsemen hunting him. But their chance of evercatching him up was clearly hopeless. 

To the left he was represented as running away over one of the wildestand most rugged bits of landscape we have ever seen with a very big manon his back. Six policemen stood scattered about a mile behind him. They had evidently been running after him, but had at last given up thepursuit as useless. 

In the center of the poster he was having a friendly fight withseventeen ladies and gentlemen. Judging from the costumes, the affairappeared to be a wedding. A few of the guests had already been killedand lay dead about the floor. The survivors, however, were enjoyingthemselves immensely, and of all that gay group he was the gayest. 

At the moment chosen by the artist, he had just succeeded in crackingthe bridegroom's skull. 

"We must see this, " said we to ourselves. "This is good. " And we had abob's worth. 

But he did not do any of the things that we have mentioned, afterall--at least, we mean we did not see him do any of them. It seemshe did them "off, " and then came on and told his mother all about itafterward. 

He told it very well, but somehow or other we were disappointed. We hadso reckoned on that fight. 

By the bye, we have noticed, even among the characters of real life, atendency to perform most of their wonderful feats "off. "

It has been our privilege since then to gaze upon many posters on whichhave been delineated strange and moving stage events. 

We have seen the hero holding the villain up high above his head, andthrowing him about that carelessly that we have felt afraid he wouldbreak something with him. 

We have seen a heroine leaping from the roof of a house on one side ofthe street and being caught by the comic man standing on the roof of ahouse on the other side of the street and thinking nothing of it. 

We have seen railway trains rushing into each other at the rate of sixtymiles an hour. We have seen houses blown up by dynamite two hundredfeet into the air. We have seen the defeat of the Spanish Armada, thedestruction of Pompeii, and the return of the British army from Egypt inone "set" each. 

Such incidents as earthquakes, wrecks in mid-ocean, revolutions andbattles we take no note of, they being commonplace and ordinary. 

But we do not go inside to see these things now. We have two looks atthe poster instead; it is more satisfying. 

The Irishman, to return to our friend, is very fond of whisky--the stageIrishman, we mean. Whisky is forever in his thoughts--and often in otherplaces belonging to him, besides. 

The fashion in dress among stage Irishmen is rather picturesque thanneat. Tailors must have a hard time of it in stage Ireland. 

The stage Irishman has also an original taste in hats. He always wears ahat without a crown; whether to keep his head cool or with any politicalsignificance we cannot say. 

THE DETECTIVE. 

Ah! he is a cute one, he is. Possibly in real life he would not bedeemed anything extraordinary, but by contrast with the average of stagemen and women, any one who is not a born fool naturally appears somewhatMachiavellian. 

He is the only man in the play who does not swallow all the villaintells him and believe it, and come up with his mouth open for more. Heis the only man who can see through the disguise of an overcoat and anew hat. 

There is something very wonderful about the disguising power of cloaksand hats upon the stage. This comes from the habit people on the stagehave of recognizing their friends, not by their faces and voices, but bytheir cloaks and hats. 

A married man on the stage knows his wife, because he knows she wears ablue ulster and a red bonnet. The moment she leaves off that blue ulsterand red bonnet he is lost and does not know where she is. 

She puts on a yellow cloak and a green hat, and coming in atanother door says she is a lady from the country, and does he want ahousekeeper?

Having lost his beloved wife, and feeling that there is no one now tokeep the children quiet, he engages her. She puzzles him a good deal, this new housekeeper. There is something about her that strangelyreminds him of his darling Nell--maybe her boots and dress, which shehas not had time to change. 

Sadly the slow acts pass away until one day, as it is getting nearclosing-time, she puts on the blue ulster and the red bonnet again andcomes in at the old original door. 

Then he recognizes her and asks her where she has been all these cruelyears. 

Even the bad people, who as a rule do possess a little sense--indeed, they are the only persons in the play who ever pretend to any--aredeceived by singularly thin disguises. 

The detective comes in to their secret councils, with his hat drawn downover his eyes, and followed by the hero speaking in a squeaky voice;and the villains mistake them for members of the band and tell them alltheir plans. 

If the villains can't get themselves found out that way, then they gointo a public tea-garden and recount their crimes to one another in aloud tone of voice. 

They evidently think that it is only fair to give the detective achance. 

The detective must not be confounded with the policeman. The stagepoliceman is always on the side of the villain; the detective backsvirtue. 

The stage detective is, in fact, the earthly agent of a discerning andbenevolent Providence. He stands by and allows vice to be triumphant andthe good people to be persecuted for awhile without interference. Thenwhen he considers that we have all had about enough of it (to whichconclusion, by the bye, he arrives somewhat late) he comes forward, handcuffs the bad people, sorts out and gives back to the good peopleall their various estates and wives, promises the chief villain twentyyears' penal servitude, and all is joy. 

THE SAILOR. 

He does suffer so with his trousers. He has to stop and pull them upabout twice every minute. 

One of these days, if he is not careful, there will be an accidenthappen to those trousers. 

If the stage sailor will follow our advice, he will be warned in timeand will get a pair of braces. 

Sailors in real life do not have nearly so much trouble with theirtrousers as sailors on the stage do. Why is this? We have seen a gooddeal of sailors in real life, but on only one occasion, that we canremember, did we ever see a real sailor pull his trousers up. 

And then he did not do it a bit like they do it on the stage. 

The stage sailor places his right hand behind him and his left in front, leaps up into the air, kicks out his leg behind in a gay and bird-likeway, and the thing is done. 

The real sailor that we saw began by saying a bad word. Then he leanedup against a brick wall and undid his belt, pulled up his "bags" as hestood there (he never attempted to leap up into the air), tucked in hisjersey, shook his legs, and walked on. 

It was a most unpicturesque performance to watch. 

The thing that the stage sailor most craves in this life is thatsomebody should shiver his timbers. 

"Shiver my timbers!" is the request he makes to every one he meets. Butnobody ever does it. 

His chief desire with regard to the other people in the play is thatthey should "belay there, avast!" We do not know how this is done; butthe stage sailor is a good and kindly man, and we feel convinced hewould not recommend the exercise if it were not conducive to piety andhealth. 

The stage sailor is good to his mother and dances the hornpipebeautifully. We have never found a real sailor who could dance ahornpipe, though we have made extensive inquiries throughout theprofession. We were introduced to a ship's steward who offered to do usa cellar-flap for a pot of four-half, but that was not what we wanted. 

The stage sailor is gay and rollicking: the real sailors we have methave been, some of them, the most worthy and single-minded of men, butthey have appeared sedate rather than gay, and they haven't rollickedmuch. 

The stage sailor seems to have an easy time of it when at sea. Thehardest work we have ever seen him do then has been folding up a rope ordusting the sides of the ship. 

But it is only in his very busy moments that he has to work to thisextent; most of his time is occupied in chatting with the captain. 

By the way, speaking of the sea, few things are more remarkable in theirbehavior than a stage sea. It must be difficult to navigate in a stagesea, the currents are so confusing. 

As for the waves, there is no knowing how to steer for them; they are sotricky. At one moment they are all on the larboard, the sea on the otherside of the vessel being perfectly calm, and the next instant they havecrossed over and are all on the starboard, and before the captain canthink how to meet this new dodge, the whole ocean has slid round and gotitself into a heap at the back of him. 

Seamanship is useless against such very unprofessional conduct as this, and the vessel is wrecked. 

A wreck at (stage) sea is a truly awful sight. The thunder and lightningnever leave off for an instant; the crew run round and round the mastand scream; the heroine, carrying the stage child in her arms and withher back hair down, rushes about and gets in everybody's way. The comicman alone is calm!

The next instant the bulwarks fall down flat on the deck and the mastgoes straight up into the sky and disappears, then the water reaches thepowder magazine and there is a terrific explosion. 

This is followed by a sound as of linen sheets being ripped up, and thepassengers and crew hurry downstairs into the cabin, evidently with theidea of getting out of the way of the sea, which has climbed up and isnow level with the deck. 

The next moment the vessel separates in the middle and goes off R. AndL. , so as to make room for a small boat containing the heroine, thechild, the comic man, and one sailor. 

The way small boats are managed at (stage) sea is even more wonderfulthan the way in which ships are sailed. 

To begin with, everybody sits sideways along the middle of the boat, allfacing the starboard. They do not attempt to row. One man does all thework with one scull. This scull he puts down through the water till ittouches the bed of the ocean, and then he shoves. 

"Deep-sea punting" would be the technical term for the method, wepresume. 

In this way do they toil--or rather, to speak correctly, does the oneman toil--through the awful night, until with joy they see before themthe light-house rocks. 

The light-house keeper comes out with a lantern. The boat is run inamong the breakers and all are saved. 

And then the band plays. 

THE END.