favorite recreation.

There is generally a public-house immediately opposite. This is handy.

These "estates" are a great anxiety to the stage hero. He is not what
you would call a business man, as far as we can judge, and his attempts
to manage his own property invariably land him in ruin and distraction.
His "estates," however, always get taken away from him by the villain
before the first act is over, and this saves him all further trouble
with regard to them until the end of the play, when he gets saddled with
them once more.

Not but what it must be confessed that there is much excuse for the poor
fellow's general bewilderment concerning his affairs and for his legal
errors and confusions generally. Stage "law" may not be quite the most
fearful and wonderful mystery in the whole universe, but it's near
it--very near it. We were under the impression at one time that we
ourselves knew something--just a little--about statutory and common law,
but after paying attention to the legal points of one or two plays we
found that we were mere children at it.

We thought we would not be beaten, and we determined to get to the
bottom of stage law and to understand it; but after some six months'
effort our brain (a singularly fine one) began to soften, and we
abandoned the study, believing it would come cheaper in the end to offer
a suitable reward, of about 50,000 pounds or 60,000 pounds, say, to any
one who would explain it to us.

The reward has remained unclaimed to the present day and is still open.

One gentleman did come to our assistance a little while ago, but his
explanations only made the matter more confusing to our minds than it
was before. He was surprised at what he called our density, and said the
thing was all clear and simple to him. But we discovered afterward that
he was an escaped lunatic.

The only points of stage "law" on which we are at all clear are as
follows:

That if a man dies without leaving a will, then all his property goes to
the nearest villain.

But if a man dies and leaves a will, then all his property goes to
whoever can get possession of that will.

That the accidental loss of the three-and-sixpenny copy of a marriage
certificate annuls the marriage.

That the evidence of one prejudiced witness of shady antecedents is
quite sufficient to convict the most stainless and irreproachable
gentleman of crimes for the committal of which he could have had no
possible motive.

But that