on
principle, Sir, on principle."

* * * * *

Very Still Life.

From a notice of Mr. BRANGWYN'S Academy picture, "The Poulterer's
Shop":--

"Everything lies in its place as if it had been there for
centuries."--_Morning Post._

* * * * *

A Sinecure.

"GENERAL; L20; fam 2; every Sunday and wk-day off."--_Daily
Paper._

* * * * *

"The rebels barricaded St. Stephen's Green with motor-cars and
tramcars, as in the French Revolution."--_Northampton
Chronicle._

The 1789 models of motor-cars and tramcars are of course out of date by
now.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"Pen."

During one of the intervals which served so well to eke out the brief
two hours of Mr. VACHELL's new "comedy," and were quite as good as many
things in the play, I allowed my mind--an absolute blank--to dwell upon
certain arresting features in the stage curtain of the St. James's
Theatre. In the centre, imposed upon a design whose significance I do
not pretend to penetrate, is a gigantic wreath encircling a monogram of
the magic initials, G. A., which are surmounted by something which I
took to be an heraldic top-hat. This headpiece is in turn surmounted by
an heraldic eagle--the ordinary arrangement by which the helmet appears
above the coat-of-arms being thus reversed. The central design is
flanked on each side by two other wreaths, massive but subordinate.
Within the sinister wreath is enshrined in Greek capitals the letters
ALEX, and within the dexter wreath the letters ANDROS. "Reading from
left to right" we have here the historic name of the Macedonian monarch.

I cannot account for the Greek form of the name on the ground that the
St. James's Theatre is the home of the Classical Drama, for the themes
of its plays seldom go back beyond the later decades of the 19th century
A.D., and I can only conclude that it is meant to indicate that the
conquests of Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER'S company resemble those of the famous
phalanx of his namesake, the Great.

Most theatres have an atmosphere of their own, and it would be hard to
recall any play at the St. James's that has been less in keeping with
the local climate than this comedy, so described, of Mr. VACHELL'S. On
the score of impropriety and improbability it might in the old days have
appealed to the Criterion management; but its lack of