ed hair and tarlatan skirts are sticking out,
they can't feel how far behind them--cost a few shillings, _and the
mental effort of resolving to have and use them_. Depend upon it,
Rouge Pot, the latter is the greater difficulty! And yet our petty
economies in matters which affect our health, our daily comfort, or
our lives, are wonderful, when the dangers or discomforts we have to
avert may, _by chance_, be averted by good luck at no cost at all. So
perhaps the few shillings have something to do with it. I hope they
will always be expended on safety glasses for all lights in use on or
about your stage.

Well, glazed calico and tarlatan are very effective, and so is cotton
velvet or velveteen; but in every family there will probably be found
a few articles of finery originally made of expensive materials, but
which are now yielded to the juvenile property-box, and from
experience I can assure you that these are valuable treasures. I have
a tender remembrance of a few which were our _pieces de resistance_
when we "dressed up" either for charades or one of Miss Corner's
plays--"in my young days." A black satin dress--ancient, but of such
lustre and softness as satins are not made now; a real camel's-hair
burnous, dyed crimson; a green satin driving cloak, lined with
fur--these things did not crush and tumble during their long periods
of repose in the property-box, as tarlatan skirts and calico doublets
were apt to do. Most valuable of all, a grey wig, worn right side
foremost by our elderly gentlemen, and wrong side foremost (so as to
bring the pig-tail curls over the forehead) by our elderly ladies. Fur
gloves, which, with a black rabbit-skin mask over her rosy cheeks,
gave ferocity in the part of "the Beast" to our jolliest little
actress. A pair of claret-coloured stockings, silk throughout, and a
pair of yellow leather slippers, embroidered with gold, doubtless
bought long years back in some Eastern bazaar, &c., &c. There came a
date in our theatrical history when only one pair of feet could get
right into these much-desired shoes, heels and all; and as the
individual who owned them was also supposed to display the
claret-coloured stockings to the best advantage, both these important
properties, with the part of Prince to which our custom assigned
them, fell to an actor who could lay no other claim to pre-eminence.

Surely your home will provide one or two of these "stand-bys" of the
green-room, and you will not fail