boots, does the stage
hero. He takes a supply with him when he is wrecked on an uninhabited
island. He arrives from long and trying journeys; his clothes are ragged
and torn, but his boots are new and shiny. He puts on patent-leather
boots to tramp through the Australian bush, to fight in Egypt, to
discover the north pole.

Sometimes he is a gold-digger, sometimes a dock laborer, sometimes a
soldier, sometimes a sailor, but whatever he is he wears patent-leather
boots.

He goes boating in patent leather boots, he plays cricket in them;
he goes fishing and shooting in them. He will go to heaven in
patent-leather boots or he will decline the invitation.

The stage hero never talks in a simple, straightforward way, like a mere
ordinary mortal.

"You will write to me when you are away, dear, won't you?" says the
heroine.

A mere human being would reply:

"Why, of course I shall, ducky, every day."

But the stage hero is a superior creature. He says:

"Dost see yonder star, sweet?"

She looks up and owns that she does see yonder star; and then off he
starts and drivels on about that star for full five minutes, and says he
will cease to write to her when that pale star has fallen from its place
amid the firmament of heaven.

The result of a long course of acquaintanceship with stage heroes has
been, so far as we are concerned, to create a yearning for a new kind of
stage hero. What we would like for a change would be a man who wouldn't
cackle and brag quite so much, but who was capable of taking care of
himself for a day without getting into trouble.

THE VILLAIN.

He wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette; that is how we know he
is a villain. In real life it is often difficult to tell a villain from
an honest man, and this gives rise to mistakes; but on the stage, as we
have said villains wear clean collars and smoke cigarettes, and thus all
fear of blunder is avoided.

It is well that the rule does not hold off the stage, or good men
might be misjudged. We ourselves, for instance, wear a clean
collar--sometimes.

It might be very awkward for our family, especially on Sundays.

He has no power of repartee, has the stage villain. All the good people
in the play say rude and insulting things to him, and smack at him,
and score off him all through the act, but he can never answer them
back--can never think of anything clever to say in return.

"Ha! ha! wait till Monday week," is the most brillia