have settled down cozily with her and have
led a simple, blameless life.

But the stage villain is built cussed.

He ill-uses this female most shockingly--not for any cause or motive
whatever; indeed, his own practical interests should prompt him to treat
her well and keep friends with her--but from the natural cussedness to
which we have just alluded. When he speaks to her he seizes her by the
wrist and breathes what he's got to say into her ear, and it tickles and
revolts her.

The only thing in which he is good to her is in the matter of dress. He
does not stint her in dress.

The stage villain is superior to the villain of real life. The villain
of real life is actuated by mere sordid and selfish motives. The stage
villain does villainy, not for any personal advantage to himself, but
merely from the love of the thing as an art. Villainy is to him its own
reward; he revels in it.

"Better far be poor and villainous," he says to himself, "than possess
all the wealth of the Indies with a clear conscience. I will be a
villain," he cries. "I will, at great expense and inconvenience to
myself, murder the good old man, get the hero accused of the crime,
and make love to his wife while he is in prison. It will be a risky and
laborious business for me from beginning to end, and can bring me no
practical advantage whatever. The girl will call me insulting names when
I pay her a visit, and will push me violently in the chest when I get
near her; her golden-haired infant will say I am a bad man and may even
refuse to kiss me. The comic man will cover me with humorous opprobrium,
and the villagers will get a day off and hang about the village pub and
hoot me. Everybody will see through my villainy, and I shall be nabbed
in the end. I always am. But it is no matter, I will be a villain--ha!
ha!"

On the whole, the stage villain appears to us to be a rather badly used
individual. He never has any "estates" or property himself, and his
only chance of getting on in the world is to sneak the hero's. He has
an affectionate disposition, and never having any wife of his own he is
compelled to love other people's; but his affection is ever unrequited,
and everything comes wrong for him in the end.

Our advice to stage villains generally, after careful observation of
(stage) life and (stage) human nature, is as follows:

Never be a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is too
harassing and the remuneration altogethe