GARDEN PART

"CHARGE, CHESTER, CHARGE!" and, of course, Chester did And she being a COLE that can sing, might only have required a charge, and pretty well too, for lodgings and hotel accommodation little Coke-sing to come out all right. Her chest-notes were forcible, during the Festival. But not exorbitantly. The weather sent every- but not too forcible, by comparison with the locality, which, if her thing down, including prices. Madame NORDICA and GRACE DAMIAN notes were chest, was, it must be remembered, Chester. Altogether in excellent form; when these two sing together it is specially good satisfactory, except to Canon BLENCOWE, who, we are informed, for the former, who sings with GRACE; and as these artists, with objected to patronise the sacred musical performance in the CatheMessrs. LLOYD and SANTLEY, must have dined at least two or three dral. Well, he didn't come; and, if so, he acted like an indifferent hours before performing, they all, being with Miss DAMIAN, sing Canon,-went off, with a slight explosion perhaps, but hurting with GRACE-after-dinner. Everything very perfect. Miss BELLE nobody. Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN thought that this Canon might have COLE,-Princess COLE, daughter, I suppose, of the ancient highly been loaded with reproaches. popular Monarch, who was, as everyone knows, so fond of music with his own chamber-trio of strings,-well, Miss BELLE COLE, not quite up to the high level of the others. But consider the weather!

HONEST OPPOSITION.-That of Sir WILFRID LAWSON, and Teetotallers, to all "Imperial Measures." A great pint this.

Wife. "POOR MAMMA IS DREADFULLY LOW-SPIRITED THIS MORNING, GEORGE. ONLY THINK-SHE HAS JUST EXPRESSED A WISH TO BE CREMATED!"

"Just so. Then I think you have been fairly athletic. Were in your school Eleven and rowed in your College boat. Still have the bat, and took away the rudder. Got both of them hanging up in your study. Was rather fond of following the Thanet Harriers. Once caught by the tide at Herne Bay and (mounted) had to swim for your life. I think I am right-stop me if I am wrong."

1 HAD received an intimation from the conductor of a popular London paper that I was to be visited by one of his representatives, so I pulled myself together and looked up my note-books. I pon-I did not stop him. dered for hours over my past life, and called to mind its most telling Live in this house. Usual sort of old-fashioned mansion. Broincidents. I arranged my house in the most artistic fashion, and awaited events rather anxiously. At the appointed time a lively young gentleman introduced himself.

"Now, my dear Sir," said he, "all I want you to do is to sit quietly and attend to me. You need not speak yourself. I am so accustomed to this sort of thing that I can save you all that trouble. Iron-grey hair-military moustache-about fifty. Think you are about fifty, and the colour of your hair is hereditary?" I nodded.

"Quite so. Well, that will do for a start. I think you have been a soldier: had adventures of the usual kind in South Africa. Lived with the Boers and Afghans. Eaten half-raw mutton, and slept for nights in huts made of mud? Eh? That's it, isn't it?" Again I bowed my head.

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"Certainly," and he jotted down a few more lines in the notebook which he had taken from his pocket. Literary man too. Written lots of books. Novels-romances. You start a plot by getting a central idea. Then you think it out. Then you find the proper sort of persons to carry out your notion. Put them down and give them names? Then think out your last incident. Get it and go backwards till you come to Chapter First. Then go to the seaside and think it over again-all of it. Then begin your work and finish it. Eh? That's the sort of thing, isn't it?"

Once more I silently acquiesced.

"Fancy too you were once a doctor. Laboured amongst the very poor. Heart crushed by the misery of the East End. Saw the usual characteristics of 'Horrible London.' Once visited a Chinese Opium den-heathen Chinee-old woman with a small pipe-squalid surroundings. Eh?" I made the same gesture as before.

caded curtains, and dark-coloured wooden chests picked up in Brittany. Pictures of your father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother. Value them all. However set highest price on a small picture of himself, once given you by his Royal Highness. Fond of dogs-that black poodle can do some tricks. Like flowers in your garden; water them every day when your toil is done. Can play on the fiddle, and sometimes indulge in a game of whist at the Club. I think that is about all you have to tell me, except when you said good-bye you shook me warmly by the hand, and once more got back to the work my entrance had interrupted."

And before I could reply he had jumped up, rushed down my steps, taken a Hansom, and gone off to interview somebody else.

"PLAY UP! MUSIQUE!"-" It seems a pity," says Our Own Times Correspondent, writing from Berehaven during the Naval Manoeuvres, that bands should now be all but abolished. Rightly or wrongly, Lord Charles Beresford is credited with the change, &c. What! Lord CHARLES, a prominent supporter and member of the Organising Committee of the Italian Opera, "forbidding the bands"!! We cannot believe that Our CHARLEY can have been so misguided as to be out of harmony with popular sentiment. Let every ship be like the Old Lady of Banbury Cross, and have music wherever she goes, to cheer up our hearts of oak, and set the tars' toes going to the hornpipe.

SLIGHT CONFUSION.-"Very glad," observed Mrs. RAM, "to read that Mr. SANTLEY is back again. He's much better employed in singing, than in finding some Pasha or other in Egypt."

ROBERT AT THE CRISTIAL PALLIS. reel suppers and reel wine, like a reel Gennelman as he is. Well, presently, as trew as I sets here a riting, in comes the stony-looking THANKS to the kindness of a frend of mine who is engaged there, Statty as was last seen on Horseback in the Churchyard, and sings I went larst week with a horder to the Cristial Pallis, but after out as he has cum to supper, as he promised for to do. And then gitting in without not paying nothink, I hout runs all the pore fritened ladies, tho I saw one on 'em as took found to my grate estonishment, as I good care to emty her glass fust, tho she was so terrible agitated. couldn't have a seat in the Theater on Then the Statty naterally harsks Mr. G. to shake hands with him, >the same libberal terms, and on picking which he werry foolishly does, for of course it's so cold that when out a nice one rite in front, I was acshally he's got a good hold of it he carn't let it go agane till he falls down arsked no less than seven-and-six for it! dead on the floor, and is ewen then so cold that his face is all blew ! Of coarse I wasn't a going for to pay And then down came the Curtain, and it was all over, and we was sitch a sum as that jest to hear a Eye- all so pleased to see how werry propperly Mr. G. was punished for talian Opera all about Don Geewarni-his owdacious goings on, that we all clapped our hands and went which I am told is short for Mr. JOHN-home. so, after a good deal of squabbling, he let me have one at the back for harf-aLuckily for me, one of my old Copperashun patrons was there, and he came up with his usual good-natered smile and said, "I didn't kno, Mr. ROBERT, as you was a Etalien skollar; are you?" To which I replied, "Not a werry fust-rate one, I'm afraid, Sir; but I knos that greesy means a great singer, and that allboney means a werry stout lady." "Well," he said, larfing, "if that's all, praps you'd like me to sit by you, and tell you all about it?" "That I suttenly shood," says I, "if you'll be

so kind." Witch he were.

crown.

And if this is the sort of morality as is tort by all Etalian Operas, it will be a jolly long wile before I takes Mrs. ROBERT to see one, tho I must say that both me and my kind frend, and all the Gennelmen, aye and a good menny of the Ladies too, all seemed to most thoroughly injoy it, and my kind frend was good enuff to tell me, that tho we are no dowt the most morallest peeple in all the world when we understands all that 's being said, when it's served up in a forren tung we can stand quite as much as most folks, and praps a little more. ROBERT.

RECENT SUMMERY PROCEEDINGS.
In the Country (selon la Saison).

consequence only the ophicleide has come down from London.

Well, after all the fiddlers and trumpetters and the big drummer How provoking that the Blue Hungarians should have thought had played away a lot of rubbish, jest to git their hands in, up went that the weather would have stopped the garden-party, and that in the Curtain, and sure enuff there was a werry ansumly drest gennelman, whose name was Leppereller, and he began a singing, as I was told, all about what a noosance it were for him to be a dordling about out there in the cold while his Marster, Mr. Geewarni, was amusing of hisself indores. Presently in comes his marster and a werry stout lady all in wite a dragging of each other about most horful, and then the Lady runs away, and in cums her father and tells Mr. G. as he ort to be ashamed of hisself for to hact like that, upon witch he pulls out his sword and they fites, and Mr. G. kills the lady's father, bang on the floor, and then runs away. And that's the hend of the fust seen, witch didn't strike me as being werry moral, till arter I'd seen the next one, and then I didn't think so werry badly of it. In the second seen, in cums Mr. G. and his servant, Mr. Leppereller, a larfing, and a singing all about the fun they've jest had? when presently in comes one of Mr. G.'s old sweethearts, who gives it him pretty hot for leaving her as he had done, when he tells her as it's all rite, as his frend Mr. L. will xplain, but as he's got a werry perticklar engagement hisself, off he goes.

Mr. L. then percedes to xplain everythink to the pore Lady, and if it hadn't been as my Copperashun patron had told me what was coming, I never coud have bleeved that any one gennelman coud have behaved so shamefull, or that hundreds of most respectabel ladies, old and yung, coud have set and lissened to it all as cool as so many cowcumbers! What a rewelashun!

Fashions in the Present Rain.

I do not think, somehow, he is producing very much effect concealed among the palms in that conservatory. Seeing that the rain is falling in torrents, it would certainly have been better to have postponed the performance of these pastoral players.

That dance of dripping wood nymphs would have been much more effective if it had been given without the aid of goloshes and umbrellas.

Dear me why here is the river that has overflowed its banks, come up in full flood to the drawing-room windows! Surely that must be the peacock perched on that garden-seat floating away bottom upwards in the distance.

am afraid that the poor Old Vicar with two feet of water running through his study must be feeling rather rheumatic. Ha! there goes the whole hay-crop carried away over the lasher. I wonder whether I could get any salmon-fishing in those cucumber If this weather continues, I really think a visit to town would be desirable. See, here is the house-boat at the front door come to take us to the station.

Mr. Leppereller unfolds a long list about 10 foot long, which, he says, contanes the names of all his Master's sweethearts! and then he tells the pore Lady how many there are and where they all lived! So many in Itterly, so many in France, so many among the Turkeys, none, I'm prowd to say, in England, but in Spain one thousand and three!! Glad I am as Mrs. ROBERT wasn't there to hear the shame-frames. fool tail! But ewen that wasn't all, for that imperent servant goes on to xplain that there was among 'em Marshonesses and Countesses and Barrownesses and Citizenesses, and ewen Serwants, in fact, sum of all sorts and all sizes! I never coud have bleeved it if I hadn't have herd it all with my own years, and my kind frend's together, and then off he runs, and ewerybody acshally larft and clapped their

ands!

NOTION FOR A JUVENILE DRAMATIC ART SCHOOL.-The excellence In the next seen of this shameful hoperer there is a pore willage Danish Exhibition) should suggest the idea to some enthusiastic of Mr. SAVILLE CLARKE's charming Tableaux Vivants (at 3.30, Anglogal a going to be married, and Mr. Geewarni acshally trys to per- Comedian-[why not to Mrs. KENDAL, the clever trainer of the Real swade her to go with him to his carsel close by! But three ladies Little Lord Fauntleroy!]-of starting an Infant Dramatic School, and gennelmen, all dressed in black, faces and all, stops him jest in time, and gives it him pretty hot, and serve him' rite, but he don't as a real nursery for the Histrionic Art. The Fairy children here seem to care much about it, for in the next seen he and his imperent Mr. CLARKE only made one mistake, which hardly counts, and that are delightful, all so pretty, and evidently such very Good Fairies. servant comes in larfing as usual, tho it is a churchyard, with ony was in representing the King as clothed. The whole point of ANDERone toom in it, and that is the pore gennelman's as he killed in the SEN's story is the child exclaiming, "Why, he has got on no clothes werry fust seen, and it has on it a picter in stone of the dead old at all!" It was the Naked Truth v. Courtly Flattery and FalseGent a seated on his favrit horse. Well, drekly as Mr. G. sees it, hood. Miss ANNIE DELATOUR'S solo in the sixth tableau is well he makes his pore servant harsk him to come and have supper with worth listening to; she is an invisible Fairy, as is Miss THORNhim that werry nite at 12 o'Clock sharp, and he nods his stony head, TON, who also sings prettily during the next tableau. So the pupils and says as he will! No wonder as the pore servant was amost could learn music as well as acting, and would be instructed in fritened to death, for it made ewen me quite start agane. Well, the werry next seen shows Mr. G. at supper with sum of declamation by "The Orator," Mr. GEORGE TEMPLE, and enter the most owdacious-looking ladies as I ever waited on, and they all themselves as Students of the Temple." drank away at reel Shampane, as I was hinformed as Mr. ORGUSTUS ARRIS was sitch a reel liberal Manager that he allers guv his peeple

RICHMOND PARK.-'Wantage Ground for Wolunteers.

HOW TO GET OUT OF IT. [Critic to Editor.-DEAR SIR,-You told me I "mustn't pitch into the new piece," which I certainly should have done but for your kindly instructions. I think I've managed the task rather neatly.-Yours, A. TRIMMER. As a model specimen of how to get out of saying that a piece is utter bosh from beginning to end, we publish the accompanying in the interests of true Critical Art.-ED.]

WE heartily congratulate Messrs. COLWYN MALAPROP and TIMOTHY GRAND on the triumphant success which attended the production of their new and original Melodrama at the Oracle Theatre yesterday evening. It is sure to run for at least five hundred nights, and at the end of that period no doubt the two playwrights, who work together so harmoniously, will have another piece ready to take its place. And when we say this, it must be clearly

brush. Rouge is a coarse pigment, but cheeks are pale without it under the fierce glare of the blue-hued 'ime-light! Again, the hypercritical may declare that acting is a lost art, and assuredly they would find some reason for their cross-grained assertion in the acting ofjlast night. Mr. Avenue strutting the stage and appealing to the chandelier with outstretched arms is not exactly the sort of hero we find in a modern drawing-room, nor is pretty Miss Haresfoot, in white muslin in a snow-storm the ideal heroine of nineteenth century romance. But what of that-both the lady and the gentleman are prime favourites with the Pit, and if the dwellers in the Stalls slumber, why then let it be more to their shame than to their glory! Out upon the querulous questioners of the likely and the commonplace! What do we want with their hypochondriacal murmurings? So long as the play is pleasant to the palate and healthy to the understanding, we can do without the applause of the reviewers and the hearty enthusiasm of the burners of midnight oil.

In conclusion what could be better than the title of the drama? In selecting "Six-foot Rule Britannia," our authors have shown a discrimination far above all praise. That it has nothing whatever to do with the motive of the piece is a detail unworthy of criticism. No, let us rest and be thankful. Let the play of last night run a thousand nights-if possible longer. And when it becomes our pleasant duty to have to record its successor, may we be in a position to write a critique as valuable as that which with a hearty shake of the hand to all concerned-authors, actors, managers, and scenepainters we now bring to a genial and welcome conclusion!

THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

THE stern-faced resolute old man once more approached the Treasury. He had been there several times before, but on this occasion there was a new Messenger at the entrance, and consequently there was a chance of his gaining admittance. With some trepidation, he passed the porch unquestioned, and now he was on the road to the being of whom he was in quest.

All we

understood that we do not pledge ourselves that this last arrived of our
entertainments is either new or original. As a matter of fact we have "I shall see him," he murmured, "and prove
seen everything contrived by our authors a score of times before, and to an unbelieving world that he is not a myth."
are sick to death of forged bills, mislaid marriage certificates, and Almost with a smile on his pale harsh features,
substituted children. We loathe deserted wives and sirenically he knocked at a door and entered.
influenced (if we may coin an epithet) husbands, and can see no fun "No," said the clerk whom he had questioned;
in the low comedy of smashing a band-box, or gentle satire in" you have come to the wrong place.
speaking disrespectfully of somebody's mother-in-law. But what of have to do is to look after the Divorce Division.
that, and what does it matter? Has not Messrs. MALAPROP and We represent the Queen's Proctor. If you want
GRAND given us a good, healthy, honest, wholesome play, that will to intervene we will help you to do it, but we
set the hearts of many a gallery boy (and, if it comes to that, of can't go further than that."
many a gallery lassie too) beating as hearts have ever beat since "But where shall I find him ?" asked the dis-
good old Father Adam walked through the Forest of Ardennes in tracted veteran.
the company of the melancholy Jacques? Ay, and it is so, and we
heartily thank our authors for what they have done for us.

In these days of mock realism and sham sentiment, it is a good thing to find that men can speak out, as it were, straight from the elbow, as readily in the Theatre as in the Church. Not that there is any particularly noble language in the piece under review. On the contrary, the captious may think that Mabel, telling her best-loved child to steal a shilling, accidentally left on the mantelpiece, in order that she may pay the cabman "more than his full fare," open to question on the score of morality. But what of that? What does it matter? The Authors are not writing for sour-visaged Puritans, but for good, sound-hearted, round-faced, honest JOHN BULL, and his rosy-cheeked wife, and his giggling, girlish, and gentle-eyed daughters.

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Portrait of the Public Prosecutor.

How should I know ?" answered the official, testily; and he turned to some one else. Disheartened but unconquered, the aged wanderer uttered a sigh and recommenced his search. He entered a second room and made his customary application.

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Now, really," said an official who was busily engaged in discussing a plate of sandwiches and a glass of sherry, "it is several degrees too bad to worry a fellow at his lunch!"

Surely you can tell me the name of your chief ?" "The name of my chief is nothing to you," was the brusque reply, "but I can tell you his office. He is Solicitor to the Treasury." Baffled once again, the wandering greybeard retired to the streets, and sitting down beside a lamp-post, uttered a series of piercing yells. "This is disgraceful!" exclaimed a passer-by. "This man is a nuisance. Constable, arrest him!"

"Very sorry, Sir, but I have not the power," replied the policeman.

"Not have the power!" echoed the wrathful pavement promenader, and then he turned to the weeping white-head and observed to him, "I have half a mind to take you before the Public Prosecutor." "Take me before the Public Prosecutor?" repeated the now radiant investigator. Pray, pray do!"

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You would not like it!" was the stern commentary. "Would not like it!" For a moment the ancient could not speak for emotion, and then he continued-" Why, it would realise the dream of my life! But if you do, you must be a cleverer man than I am, for I have been hunting for the Public Prosecutor for the last twenty years, without being able to find him."

Again it may not be altogether true to nature to make MajorGeneral Sir JOHN ABERCROMBY, K.C.B., dining at mess as the guest of Staff-Sergeant TOMKINS in full uniform after the inspection of the latter's regiment, but if there is to be no poetic licence, beer may as well be abandoned and skittles regarded as a game whose rules are lost for ever in the dim realms of a distant obscurity! For what do we go to a play-house? Assuredly not for SHAKSPEARE or the musical glasses, to say nothing of prunella! So long as the fare is sound at the core, what more can we want? And if the play of last night was not only improbable but impossible from the opening scene down to the end of the tag which was the signal for the lowering of the green baize curtain, surely the fact remains that the work was as sweet-scented as hay, and as homely as a bean feast or a barn-door fowl. Given this and what does the rest matter? As Othello observes, "Not a jot, not a jot!" And the swarthy Moor of Venice was right. The great master who "thought him out" in the little cottage in Stratford-on-Avon was never wiser, never sager, never freer from cant and nonsense than when he wrote "hold up the mirror to nature to show vice her own image and virtue the habit in which she lives," or words to like effect. Ah, "Sweet WILLIE" was indeed a judge of the frailties of poor humanity! He knew that the flats must be "joined," and the scenes painted with a ten-pound | WALES.-"Mr. GEE.”

"Not find him! Why here is his portrait!" And with this the good-natured passer-by presented the old man with the original picture, of which the sketch ornamenting this article is a rough, but not altogether unsuggestive copy!

ANOTHER "G. O. M." IN THE FIELD FOR GALLANT LITTLE

The Lady Hildegarde de Sangrazul. "WILL YOU TAKE A SHARE IN THE RAFFLE FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL VASE?"

Affable Stranger. "AH, MY DEAR, IF IT WAS ONLY YOU AS WAS GOING TO BE RAFFLED FOR, NOW, BLEST IF I WOULDN'T TAKE FORTY!!