east about
them, were sufficiently Prussian, and Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY, as
_Margaret's_ husband, indicated with much precision the change in the
behaviour of a German gentleman, after marriage, towards the lady he has
consented to honour with the thing he calls his heart.

Apart from the one or two doubtful points which I have referred to, the
play went well, though it seems a pity that so much insistence should
have been laid upon the lack of culture (English sense) in households
where the strictest economy was essential. One was conscious of a rather
painful note of vulgarity in the attitude of _Margaret's_ father, where
he sniffs at the sordid environment of her German home. Impecuniosity is
of course a prevalent trouble among German officers in small garrison
towns; but one would have preferred that if bad taste in dress and
furniture had to be ridiculed the laugh should have been at the expense
of a richer society. Finally, I wonder a little that the authors, who
must have known better, should have helped to perpetuate the popular
misconception by which the German word "Kultur" is regarded as the
equivalent of our "culture."

O. S.

"A Kiss for Cinderella."

No well-fed person need ever quite expect to understand one of Sir J. M.
BARRIE'S mystery plays at a single sitting. That's one of his best
trumps, of course. But it always seems to me that, like so many writers
of genius, he never quite knows what are his best and what his poorest
things, and just tosses them to us to sort out for ourselves. In this
new instance, to work off a piece of strictly professional criticism, it
is clear that both prologue and epilogue are much too protracted. It is
a sound dramatic canon, which not even our most brilliant chartered
libertine of stage-land can flout with impunity, not to keep your
audience in too long a suspense while preparing your salient theme, nor,
after quickening their interest and firing their imagination, to chill
with the obvious or distract with the irrelevant.

Sir JAMES'S _Cinderella_ is maid-of-all-work to the housekeeper of a
retired humourist turned painter (Mr. O. B. CLARENCE), a vague peppery
sentimental old bachelor with an ideal of which a full-sized cast of the
"Venus di Milo" stands for symbol in his studio. _Cinderella_ is dumpy
and plain (that is the idea which Miss HILDA TREVELYAN tries loyally but
without much success to suggest to us), but she has the tiniest possible
feet. Regretfully a