When a performer appears alone on the music-hail stage, it is easy to understand why. His or her domestic life has been a failure, I fistened que evening to six songs in succession: the first two were sung by a gentleman. Ho entered with his clothes hanging upon him in shreds. He explained that he had just come from an argument with his wife. He showed us the brick with which she had hit him, and the bump at the back of his head that had resulted.
'The fanny mai's marriage is noyer a success. But really chis scorns to be his own fault. "She was such a lovely girl," he tells us, " with' a face—well, youd hardly call' it a face, it was more like a gas explosion. 'Then she had those wonderful' sort of eyes that you can seo two ways at once with, one of them looks down the street, while the other one is watching round the corner. Can see you coming any way. And. her mouth!" It appears that if she stands anywhere near the curb and smiles, caro-Jess people mistake hor for a pillar-box, and drop letters into her. "And such a voice!" Wo are told it is a perfect imitation of motor-car, When she laughs people spring into doorways to escape being run over. If he will mercy that sort of woman, what can be expect The man is asking for it.
The lady who followed him. also told us a sad story of misplaced trust, She also was comic—so the programme assured us. The humorist appears to have" no luck. She had lent her lover money to buy the ring, and the licence, and to furnish the flat, Hoe did buy the ring, and he furnished the flat, but it was for another lady. The audience roared. I have heard it so often asked, " What is humour?" From observation I should describe it as other's people's troubles. A male performer followed her, Ho came on dressed in a night-shict, carrying a baby. Hi gone out for the that was his joke. successful song of the whole philosopher has put it on record that always felt sad when he reflected on the sorrows of humanity. But when hoe reflected on its amusements he felt sad still. Why do I love to sco a flabby-faced man' go behind curtains, and, emerging in a wig and a false board, say that he is now Bismarck or Mr. Chamberlain I have felt resontmout against the Lightning Impersonator over since the days of Queen Vietoria's Diamond Jubilee. Daring that summer every Lightning Impersonator' ended his show by shouting, while the band played the National, Anthem, Queen Victoria!"
PATRIOTISM AND THE UNSKILYUL, Ho was not the Queen. He did not even, to my thinking, look a.lady; but at once I had to stand up in my place and sing, "God save the Queen." It was a time of enthusiastic loyalty; if you did not spring up quickly some patriotic old fool from the back would reach across and hit you over the head with the first thing he could.lay his hands upon. Other music-hall performers caught at the idea. By ending up with "God Save the Queen," any performer, however poor, could retire in a whirlwind of applause. Niggors, having bored us with tiresome songs about coons and honeys and Swaues Rivers, would, as a last resource, strike up " God Save the Queen" on the banjo. The whole house would have to rise and cheer. Elderly Sisters ''rippet having failed to arouse our enthusiasm by allowing us a brief glimpse of an ankle, would put aside all frivolity, and tell us of a hero lover named George, who had fought somebody somewhere for his Queen and country. He fell!"—bang from the big drum and the blue limelight. In a recumbent posi-
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