xtra-Ordinary Reader, and backs his opinion with his signature,

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

* * * * *

MORE IBSENITY!

[Illustration]

Dear EDITOR,--Noticing that the author of _The Doll's House_ was to
have another morning, or, to use an equally suitable epithet, mourning
performance devoted to his works, I made up my mind, after bracing
up my nerves, to attend it. The 23rd of February (the date of the
proposed function) as the second Monday in Lent, seemed to me, too,
distinctly appropriate. By attending the performance--IBSEN recommends
self-execution--I sentenced myself to three hours and a half of
boredom, tempered with disgust. I cannot help feeling that whatever
my past may have been, the penance paid to wipe it out was excessive,
and therefore rendered it unnecessary that I should attend a second
performance announced for last week.

_Rosmershoelm_ is in four Acts and one Scene--a room in _Rosmer's_
House. Act I. _Rector Kroll_, who is the brother-in-law of _Pastor
Rosmer_, calls upon the latter, to ask him to edit a paper in the
Conservative interest. _Kroll_ (who, by the way, is a married man)
before seeing the widower of his dead sister, has a mild flirtation
with _Rebecca West_, a female of a certain age, who has taken up her
abode for some years in the Rector's house. And here I may observe
that the Rector's housekeeper, _Madame Helseth_, presumably a highly
respectable person, although she has excellent reasons, from the
first, for believing that the relations between her Master and
_Rebecca_ are scarcely platonic, accepts the domestic arrangements of
the Rosmer _menage_ with hearty acquiescence, not to say enthusiasm.
_Rosmer_ interrupts the Rector's _tete-a-tete_ with the fascinating
_Rebecca_, and declines the proffered editorship, because he is a
Radical, and an atheist. End of Act I.,--no action to speak of, but
a good deal of wordy twaddle. In Act II. we learn that the late _Mrs.
Rosmer_ has committed suicide, because she was informed that the
apostate Pastor could only save his villainy from exposure by giving
immediately the position of wife to her friend _Rebecca_. She has had
this tip on the most reliable authority,--it has been furnished by
_Rebecca_ herself. Then the Pastor asks _Rebecca_ to marry him, but
is refused, for no apparent reason, unless it be that she has tired
of her guilty passion. In Act III. _Rebecca_ admits to the widower and
his brother-in