anchester Paper._

It looks as if they were only rabbits, after all.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"REMNANT."

I wish now that I had not been compelled to postpone my visit to the
Royalty, for I think the fall of Baghdad must have put me a bit above
myself. Anyhow, I was less moved than usual by the triumph of virtue and
the downing of vice; and permitted myself to wonder how a play like
_Remnant_ ever found its way into the Royalty (of all theatres), and what
Mr. DENNIS EADIE (of all actors) was doing in this galley, this
melted-butter boat. And indeed there were moments when I could see that Mr.
EADIE himself shared my wonder, if I rightly interpreted certain signs of
indifference and detachment in his performance. I even suspected a sinister
intention in the title, though, of course, Messrs. MORTON and NICCODEMI
didn't really get their play off in the course of a bargain sale of
superannuated goods.

Apart from the Second Act, where Miss MARIE LOeHR (looking rather like a
nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of _Remnant_ with a
delightfully stolid naivete, the design of the play and its simple little
devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels
between _Tony_ and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model,
till I found that he was only an artist in steam locomotives) were
extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. In all this Bohemian business one
looked in vain for a touch of the art of MURGER. What would one not have
given for something even distantly reminiscent of the _Juliet_ scene--"_et
le pigeon chantait toujours_"? And it wasn't as if this was supposed to be
a sham Americanised _quartier_ of to-day. We were in the true period--under
Louis PHILIPPE. Indeed I know no other reason (costumes always excepted)
why the scene was the Paris of 1840. For the purposes of the play _Tony_
might just as well have been a British designer of tanks (London, 1916).
Nor was there anything even conventionally French about the girl _Remnant_,
who might have been born next-door to Bow Bells.

[Illustration: REMNANT BARGAIN DAY.

_Tony_ ... MR. DENNIS EADIE.

"_Remnant_" ... MISS MARIE LOeHR.]

Miss MARIE LOeHR was the life and soul of the party. Her true comedy manner,
when she was serious, was always fascinating. She said with great
discretion her little Barriesque piece about the desirability of babies,
and she did all she knew to keep the sentimen