r disproportionate to the risks
and labor.

If you have run away with the clergyman's daughter and she still clings
to you, do not throw her down in the center of the stage and call her
names. It only irritates her, and she takes a dislike to you and goes
and warns the other girl.

Don't have too many accomplices; and if you have got them, don't keep
sneering at them and bullying them. A word from them can hang you, and
yet you do all you can to rile them. Treat them civilly and let them
have their fair share of the swag.

Beware of the comic man. When you are committing a murder or robbing a
safe you never look to see where the comic man is. You are so careless
in that way. On the whole, it might be as well if you murdered the comic
man early in the play.

Don't make love to the hero's wife. She doesn't like you; how can you
expect her to? Besides, it isn't proper. Why don't you get a girl of
your own?

Lastly, don't go down to the scenes of your crimes in the last act. You
always will do this. We suppose it is some extra cheap excursion down
there that attracts you. But take our advice and don't go. That
is always where you get nabbed. The police know your habits from
experience. They do not trouble to look for you. They go down in the
last act to the old hall or the ruined mill where you did the deed and
wait for you.

In nine cases out of ten you would get off scot-free but for this
idiotic custom of yours. Do keep away from the place. Go abroad or to
the sea-side when the last act begins and stop there till it is over.
You will be safe then.

THE HEROINE.

She is always in trouble--and don't she let you know it, too! Her life
is undeniably a hard one. Nothing goes right with her. We all have our
troubles, but the stage heroine never has anything else. If she only got
one afternoon a week off from trouble or had her Sundays free it would
be something.

But no; misfortune stalks beside her from week's beginning to week's
end.

After her husband has been found guilty of murder, which is about the
least thing that can ever happen to him, and her white-haired father has
become a bankrupt and has died of a broken heart, and the home of
her childhood has been sold up, then her infant goes and contracts a
lingering fever.

She weeps a good deal during the course of her troubles, which we
suppose is only natural enough, poor woman. But it is depressing from
the point of view of the audience, and we al