SHOCK TACTICS.

[Illustration: "I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT INSURANCE.]

[Illustration: I WON'T KEEP YOU A MOMENT]

[Illustration: HAVE A CIGAR?]

[Illustration: NOW WHAT PROVISION ARE YOU MAKING FOR THE FUTURE?]

[Illustration: THINK OF YOUR LITTLE ONES.]

[Illustration: YOU ARE A HEALTHY MAN, BUT----]

[Illustration: YOU MAY FALL ILL----]

[Illustration: OR THE WORST MIGHT----]

[Illustration: SIGN HERE."]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"DADDALUMS."

This is a play about a Northampton shoe-manufacturer of Scottish
nationality. There is, of course, nothing quite like leather, and
I can well believe that the lucrative properties of the boot trade
(notwithstanding its alleged association with atheistic principles)
must at one time or other have attracted this prehensile race; yet I
doubt if Northampton, home of the cobbling industry, ever encouraged
a Scot to penetrate its preserves. Mr. LOUIS ANSPACHER, who wrote the
play, may have some inside knowledge denied to me, though his name
does not vividly indicate a Scots origin; but it is certain, if his
_Wallace Craigie_ really came from over the border, that he was
no true Scot, for his dialect showed obvious traces of Sassenach
pollution.

I have a mind that moves slowly and I hate to be hustled at the
opening of a play. I hate an author to plunge me into a whirl of
movement and a medley of characters as if he assumed that I was
intimate with circumstances known only to himself and his cast. I want
to be told, very quietly, where I am, and if he does not tell me I
become peevish. But, even if I hadn't been put off at the start, I
don't think my sympathies would ever have been very deeply engaged. I
soon saw that, whatever happened to anybody, I should easily bear
up. Mr. LOUIS CALVERT did all that was humanly possible to correct
my indifference, but his _Daddalums_ (as you might gather from such a
name) was not one of those heroic figures whose struggles against the
perversity of fate are apt to melt even the cold hearts of the gods
(Olympian). This old cobbler, suddenly grown rich, whose one ambition
was to make his son "_Tammas_" a gentleman (as he understood the
term), at any cost to the boy's soul, was asking for trouble from the
beginning. And when he got it I was far less sorry for the old fool
than I was pleased at the chances which this turn of fortune gave to
the versatility of Mr. CALVERT.

But the interest of the p