cts of the recent Court successes--to wit,
_The Schoolmistress_, _Dandy Dick_, and _The Magistrate_. Mr. CLAYTON
made an excellent speech, which was enthusiastically applauded, and Mrs.
JOHN WOOD and Miss NORREYS received special calls. After a brief
interval, during which Court favour will be extended to King William
Street, Strand, a more spacious palace will be erected for the reception
of Courtiers in Chelsea, where a new Comedy, by Mr. PINERO, will be
presented. Mr. ARTHUR CECIL, though retiring from managerial cares,
will, when the new Theatre is finished, undertake what would be a
difficult task for anybody else, to fill his usual place on the boards.

* * * * *

MAGAZINE TITLE (_applicable to the Police Station where Miss Cass was
temporarily locked up_),--"_Cass-cells._"

* * * * *

STUDIES FROM MR. PUNCH'S STUDIO.

No. XXIX.--A LADY DRAMATIST.

"YOU must do it at a _Matinee_," said her little crowd of five o'clock
tea-visitors, "and get Mr. ELLISTON DRURY to play the Roman Poet."

One of the company was in earnest. Miss ELMIRA JENKS believed in her
hostess and friend. The others thought it "fun" to "egg on" Miss DE
GONCOURT to make herself ridiculous.

[Illustration]

"And why not take the part of the heroine yourself, dear?--nobody in all
your intellectual set recites so well. Why not act in your own
Tragedy--how delightful it would be!"

"But you forget," said the Lady Dramatist, pouring out for her friend a
fresh cup of tea from a delicious specimen of Nankin blue into an
equally artistic cup of Oriental white. "You forget that I am thirty."

On the contrary, their memories were excellent.

"Thirty-five, if she's a day," was the silent verdict; aloud, it ran
thus:--"My dear, a woman is no older than she looks. You are
twenty-five, and, in the classic dress of the Roman Maiden, you will
appear twenty--not a day older."

"You are very kind," she said; "but flattery is pleasant when it
encourages one's dearest hopes."

"We do not flatter--we speak as critics, and friends," they replied.

Mr. ELLISTON DRURY, the new Tragedian of the Parthenon Theatre, who had
come from the Provinces to astonish London, was the only Actor who had
given Miss DE GONCOURT any real encouragement to persevere in the
direction to which her ambition pointed; but he was full of sympathy,
and knew what it was himself to fight against prejudice, not to say
co