ed by the Germans now groaning over
the wise tyranny of the provisions of the new Patent Act, to which
ignorant people have applied the offensive term "Protectionist." Shoddy
treated with aniline dyes can produce effects that overwhelm the colours
of the honest old materials which owed their hues to the efforts of the
vegetable and the insect. A modern manufacturer is proud when his
scarlet shoddy shrieks like a steam siren. Unfortunately some of the
managers seem to like the shriek.

Stage Meals

An undistinguished foreigner from France was talking the other day about
the English stage, of which apparently he had seen a good deal. After
being asked many searching questions put in the hopes of eliciting
material for "copy" it was discovered that what he most admired in our
theatre is the way in which stage meals are treated. In the first place,
he was astonished at the "exquisite distinction" displayed by the
players in eating them. The "perfect elegance" which one actress
exhibited in consuming an egg had fascinated him and he stated with
conviction that he could have spent a happy evening simply watching her
eat these ill-starred hopes of chickens. It was pointed out that the
management could hardly afford to pay her a sufficient salary for the
strain on her digestive faculties, and also that the eggs--real Boat
Race eggs, not election missiles--cost something.

He is quite an undistinguished person and utterly _bourgeois_, though he
has written some successful funny farces which as yet have not suffered
the dishonour of adaptation, and during his many visits to London has
acquired an even more perfect ignorance of the English and their ways
than if he had never paid tribute to Neptune; for he always stays at a
little French hotel where there is absolutely nothing British, not even
the meat or the matches or the washing arrangements.

Now, if there is one matter of manners in which we are better than the
people of the Continent it is in our mode of eating. How this has come
about it is difficult to say. One knows that good French families
sometimes engage English nursery governesses in order that the children
may be brought up to feed themselves daintily, and that people in good
society on the other side of the streak certainly commit acts at dinner
which are rather ugly. Goodness knows what is the reason. Possibly the
cynic would discover in our greater refinement a curious form of
snobbishness, the sort of tim