oted to collections for the charities connected with the
Variety Stage should be known as "Tag Day." The old fellow had always
imagined that "Tag Day" was a toast on German war vessels.

* * * * *

A TIME EXPOSURE.

I turned the family album's page
And noted with a smile
The efforts of a bygone age
At photographic style;
There, pegtopped, grandpa could be seen,
While grandma beamed, contented
To know her brand-new crinoline
The latest thing invented.

And there Aunt Mary's looks belied
Her gravity of dress;
That great poke-bonnet could not hide
Her youthful comeliness;
There, too, was father when a boy,
And elsewhere in the series
A youthful cousin (Fauntleroy),
An uncle in Dundrearies.

And then before my scornful eye
A smirking youth appeared,
Flaunting a loose aesthetic tie
And embryonic beard;
With laughter I began to shake,
Noting the watch-chain (weighty)
And all the things that went to make
A "nut" in 1880.

I looked upon the other side,
Still tittering, to see
What branch the fellow occupied
Upon our family tree;
A name was scrawled across the card
With flourishes in plenty,
And lo! it was the present bard
Himself at five-and-twenty.

* * * * *

The Sprinter.

From a testimonial to a system of health culture:--

"I think I have never felt so glorious as I do this morning. At
4.30 I woke up after a wet waist pack, got hot water, cleaned
myself, took a glass of lemon juice, exercised, and for the last
three-quarters of an hour I have been running through your notes."

He mustn't take _too_ much exercise.

* * * * *

THE COMPLETE DRAMATIST.

III. MEALS AND THINGS.

In spite of all you can do in the way of avoiding soliloquies and
getting your characters on and off the stage in a dramatic manner, a
time will come when you realise sadly that your play is not a bit like
life after all. Then is the time to introduce a meal on the stage. A
stage meal is popular, because it proves to the audience that the
actors, even when called GEORGE ALEXANDER or ARTHUR BOURCHIER, are real
people just like you and me. "Look at Sir HERBERT eating," we say
excitedly to each other in the pit, having had a vague idea up till then
that an actor lived like a god on praise and grease-paint and his
photograph in the papers. "A