is leading article, and of these, it
must be owned, he has an inexhaustible stock. He is as chock-full of
noble sentiments as a bladder is of wind. They are weak and watery
sentiments of the sixpenny tea-meeting order. We have a dim notion that
we have heard them before. The sound of them always conjures up to our
mind the vision of a dull long room, full of oppressive silence, broken
only by the scratching of steel pens and an occasional whispered "Give
us a suck, Bill. You know I always liked you;" or a louder "Please, sir,
speak to Jimmy Boggles. He's a-jogging my elbow."

The stage hero, however, evidently regards these meanderings as gems of
brilliant thought, fresh from the philosophic mine.

The gallery greets them with enthusiastic approval. They are a
warm-hearted people, galleryites, and they like to give a hearty welcome
to old friends.

And then, too, the sentiments are so good and a British gallery is so
moral. We doubt if there could be discovered on this earth any body of
human beings half so moral--so fond of goodness, even when it is
slow and stupid--so hateful of meanness in word or deed--as a modern
theatrical gallery.

The early Christian martyrs were sinful and worldly compared with an
Adelphi gallery.

The stage hero is a very powerful man. You wouldn't think it to look at
him, but you wait till the heroine cries "Help! Oh, George, save me!" or
the police attempt to run him in. Then two villains, three extra hired
ruffians and four detectives are about his fighting-weight.

If he knocks down less than three men with one blow, he fears that he
must be ill, and wonders "Why this strange weakness?"

The hero has his own way of making love. He always does it from behind.
The girl turns away from him when he begins (she being, as we have
said, shy and timid), and he takes hold of her hands and breathes his
attachment down her back.

The stage hero always wears patent-leather boots, and they are always
spotlessly clean. Sometimes he is rich and lives in a room with seven
doors to it, and at other times he is starving in a garret; but in
either event he still wears brand-new patent-leather boots.

He might raise at least three-and-sixpence on those boots, and when the
baby is crying for food, it occurs to us that it would be better if,
instead of praying to Heaven, he took off those boots and pawned them;
but this does not seem to occur to him.

He crosses the African desert in patent-leather