There is unfortunately too much reason to fear that the distress of last winter will be more than repeated during the coming season, and the President of the Local Government Board, Mr. Walter Long, has summoned a conference of poor-law guardians to consider what means shall be adopted to deal with the evil. Mr. Long has been careful to warn the public against any alarmist views on the subject, and to point out the danger of establishing relief works except as a last resource; but that there will be need for some action seems unin. The Board of foreign trade. It is mostly confined to exports, but as the "fiscal reformer' regards exports as "credit" and imports as" debit" this is from his point of view an additional sign of prosperity. Still, the figures issued by the Labour Department prove beyond question that the percentage of workmen out of employment is even now considerably above the average, and a hard winter must therefore have terrible consequences.
An "Improper" Play.
'A somewhat heated controversy is raging over Mr. Pinero's new play "A Wife without) a Smile," which was produced at Wyndham's Theatre on Wednesday under the description of a "disguised comedy." On the merits of the play as a comedy ti critics are somewhat divided; but that it Keeps the audience in constant laughter is beyond question. It is, however, unmistakably "risky," and there is one episode which plays " loading part in it that has provoked quite a storm of indignation in some quarters, and a request to know what the Licensor of Plays was thinking about when ho allowed it to pass. The husband of the smileless wife in his desperate attempts to cultivate his wife's deficient sense of humour, resorts to practical jokes, one of which i to fasten a piece of string toa sofa ina room occupied by a newly-married couple; ho passes it through a hole in the floor, and ties a doll to the end of it in the room below. When the bride and bridegroom "canoodle" on the sofa, the doll jumps about, to the intense amusement of the company which is assembled below—all except the smileless wife, who—not from 'a sense of propriety but through lack of humour or profound melancholy—is quite unmoved by the sight. only extremely risky evitably reminds some of lence of certain hackneyed moking-room" stories which are more it It is really surprising that Pinero should have had the into his play.
The Sacred Lamp.
Another of those who kept the sacred lamp of burlesque" burning so brightly at the Gaiety Theatre a generation ago has passed away in the person of John Hollingshead, who, by the way, was the inventor of that daring phrase. It was not only burlesque, however, that was played with brilliant success during Hollingshead's management of the Gaiety Theatre. Phelps, Matthews, Tode, Irving, Miss Neilson, Miss Lytton, and a host of other great stars of the theatrical firm: ment appeared there while he ruled over its fortunes; and it was his boast at a time when actors earned nothing like the princely salaries they do to-day, that he was paying three members of his stafl—Matthews, Tode, and Phelps—thesalaries of Lord Chancellors. Hollingshead was
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.