violence of the most brutal and criminal kind. "Where were the police?" it was asked; "and how long was our noble Embankment to be the happy hunting-ground of the garotter, the 'basher,' and the midnight murderer ?"

Dy New and Original Play.

By G. R. SIMS.

HE tales are all written, the stories all told,

THE

The jokes are all ancient, the tricks are all old.

'Tis difficult-very-for authors to-day

To find a good subject and write a good play.

When you pace up and down in your study at night,
The muses to hover around you invite,

They bring you, God bless 'em, of notions a score,
But never a notion you've not seen before.

Yet everything cometh to him who can wait,
It's merely a question of early or late;
And my inspiration came just as I said,

"O fool, quit the drama!-sweep crossings instead?"

Oh sweet was the subject!-a story of woe;
With incidents crowded, all certain to go;
The characters firmly from Nature I drew,
And, oh! the dénouement was perfectly new.

I wrote out the story, constructed the plot,
I dropped in of pathos and humour a lot;
Then I buried myself in a den far away,
Beginning in earnest to work at my play.

The scheme was poetic, the "curtains" immense,
The chief situations were grand and intense;
But when I had finished my play in the rough,
I met with a sudden and cruel rebuff.

I read it to Slater, a critical friend,

Who with me an evening had dropped in to spend,
And when I had finished, he coughed and he said,
"Your hero's born after his father is dead."

"That's not quite impossible, still if you turn

To your play, and compare all the dates, you will learn,
When born was your hero, this valley of tears

His father had quitted exactly three years.

"His mother, the lady whose grief is so strong,
Must have wed at eleven, which surely is wrong,
Your heroine's clearly, though mean it you can't.
Your hero's young woman and also his aunt.

"I own your dénouement's exceedingly fine,
You've taken a highly original line;
But how does a convict at Botany Bay,
Turn up for the finish in town the same day?"

*

A sensitive nature, from banter I shrink,

I've torn up the drama and taken to drink;
'Tis carping at trifles-the critical craze--
Prevents me producing original plays.

SHE

HE made her first appearance at the little theatre at Paignton, before a large company of invited and highly appreciative friends. Friends in the sense of the word that they would have applauded the feeblest efforts made by the only daughter and darling of the wealthiest man in or near wealthy Torquay.

This taking the Paignton Theatre, and getting together a well organized band of the cleverest amateurs in that part of Devonshire, all of whom were quartered for the week in Torre Place, Mr. Grunow's overgrown mansion, was entirely Daisy's work. Daisy Grunow had, on a never-to-be forgotten occasion, stayed at the Glengarriff Hotel, when its principal rooms were occupied by a popular actress, about whom there hung such an atmosphere of success, and beauty, grace, luxury, wealth, and mystery, as drove Daisy into a delirium of admiration and envy. Private life appeared pettifoggingly small and uninteresting to her, in comparison with this woman's glorious career. Even in these days of her lazy leisure, the stage queen was constantly in receipt of telegrams, and the Irish Times and other journals chronicled her movements as servilely as some portion of the independent English press record those of our gracious Sovereign.

To know, to speak to her, to be able to go back to Torquay and say, "When Miss Cadogan and I were staying at the Glengarriff Hotel, we used to," &c. &c., became Daisy's dream. Eventually she compassed her ends. Some enterprising naval officers got up a party for a cruise round Bantry Bay, and a luncheon on board the Admiralty yacht. Some of them knew the Grunow's through-while stationed at Plymouth-having been in the habit of running up for the Torquay races and balls. One fortunate man knew Miss Cadogan! The result was that, through this fortuitous combination of circumstances, this girl met her envied idol, and forthwith took the stage fever virulently. And this through no encouraging words from Miss Cadogan. The artist said very little about her profession, in spite of the running fire of question and conjecture which Daisy poured into her. Miss Cadogan was out for a holiday, and for the hour took more interest in the waves of Bantry Bay, and the way the yacht was sailed over them, than she did in recalling her triumphs and experiences for Daisy's benefit.

But she took an interest in the pretty, fair-haired, violet-eyed girl, with a figure that was lithe and lissom as a willow wand, and a nature that was untainted by the fulsome adulation her father's wealth had won from the majority of her surroundings from her cradle. Before the cruise was over, Miss Cadogan knew the names of Daisy's favourite mare, dog, friend, and novelist. About plays and actors Daisy was shy of offering an opinion before an expert.

"When I come to Torquay, I shall find out who the man is. You've avoided mentioning him, I observe," she said to Daisy, and the latter said, indifferently

"There really is no man in the case.

You see we're comparatively new people in Torquay, and men come and go so quickly. Before we came to live there I was at school nearly always, and when I was at home papa's friends were not attractive. You see we're rich, but we're only sewing machines after all."

"I wish I were a sewing machine, with sixteen horses in my stable and an establishment like a duchess's," Miss Cadogan said, as if she meant it; for Daisy had confided many details concerning their manner of life to her new friend.

"I'd rather be you than any one in the world," Daisy replied, with such intense fervour that Miss Cadogan offered laughingly to "train her, if she ever really wanted to go on the stage."

The result of this chance rencontre was that Daisy went home and joined a company of amateurs, and, as a grand banquet always followed the theatricals at Torre Place, afforded her friends vast pleasure and amusement.

But there was one friend who steadily refused to be entertained by Miss Grunow's new fad. This was a young medical man who had lately come to Torquay to practise, and who, unluckily for his own peace of mind, had come into collision with Daisy in the course of a

lengthened attendance on her father. Before meeting with Miss Cadogan, Dr. Courteney had been the greatest excitement of Daisy's life, for he was unable to conceal from her that she was the star of his. But after the return from Glengarriff, the prosiness of private life became painfully apparent to her. He had not asked her to marry him; but before going to Ireland she had felt very sure that he meant to do so, and as pleased as she was sure. Now she was glad that it was still in her power to avert an offer, and evade entering upon a dead level road of humdrum respectability.

As

The means she took were manifold, but they were not efficacious. For example, in her desire to impress him with her devotion to the stage and her indifference to everything else, she consulted him continually about her costumes and her reading of various parts. all the characters she contemplated playing were romantic, and as she rehearsed them at him with all the fervour and feeling that was in her, he did not get cured or even cooled off as quickly as she had good-naturedly intended. Still she resolved to pursue the course which reason and right feeling had dictated; doubtless, in the end, her perseverance would be rewarded. And in the meantime (though she meant to give her whole heart to the stage) it was very pleasant to see so much of a handsome, agreeable, gentlemanly man, who thought her the most perfect girl the world held.

But after that appearance at the little theatre at Paignton, when she had been flattered and lauded far more than was good for her, he set himself the hard task of differing with her, and giving her to understand that he thought she was both wrong and weak.

"The servile asses who wrote those notices in the local papers don't know decent acting when they see it, or they wouldn't have been fatuous enough to say that there was no trace of the amateur' about you, and that you 'took the stage with the grace of Ellen Terry."' The truth is, that when you weren't nervously awkward, you were depressingly limp. It's all very well for you to amuse yourself by acting in your father's drawing-room for the amusement of a few friends who are as lenient as they're ignorant; but don't go on the stage of a theatre again."

They were such friends, and he knew that she knew so well that he loved her, that he thought that it behoved him to speak the truth, and that he might do it with impunity.

"So far from not going on the stage of a theatre again, I'm going on one for good-for all my life, I mean," she said, defiantly, and then he made the mistake of directly opposing and censuring a resolution made in haste and wrath.

"I really hope you're only saying this out of rather unreasonable resentment," he said, deprecatingly. "The idea of your going on the stage would be too ridiculous, if it were not so painful to me." "May I ask why?"

Surely, you know, Daisy," he said, with some emotion. "You've

let me cherish a hope that you will one day be my wife for a long time, now————____”

"There, you've said it, and I didn't want you to say it, I'm not such a mean girl as to have let you ask me without having tried to stop you," Daisy cried pathetically.

"To stop me!"

"Yes, don't you see I felt you wouldn't think with me about my going on the stage. Papa's given his consent; he loves me, and will let me follow the sure instinct I have, that the stage is my vocation; but you wouldn't like your wife to be an actress, would you?"

This question was asked so softly, that for a moment Dr. Courteney felt inclined to say that she might even jump through hoops if her tastes lay in that direction, so long as she would consent to be his wife. But he restrained himself.

"Won't you give up this idle fancy for a profession that's fraught with the deadliest danger for a girl, for my sake, Daisy?"

She looked uneasy, and hesitated. "It's so local-minded to make a bugbear of the danger," she said, petulantly. "What danger can come near me? I wish you would be more liberal about it; we might be so happy if you would."

"You mean if I'd consent to your going on the stage you would marry me?"

"Yes, Duncan !"

"My darling, you tempt me awfully, but be your own true self, Daisy, and come to me without asking for such a concession." She shook her head, and the corners of her mouth drooped miserably.

I shouldn't be my own true self if I didn't confess to loving the stage better than-anything in the world."

"My dear girl, yours is such an ignorant love; you have fooled about with a lot of amateurs who spoil the text of every play they attempt through shortness of memory and general self-satisfied incapability, and you have been flattered by a number of effete toadies, but as to your loving the stage, why you don't know it, dear."

"Then I will know it," she said, impetuously. "And it's no use our saying a word more about it, Dr. Courteney; you'll despise me, I feel you will, but I have got an engagement through my friend, Miss Cadogan" (Oh! days at Glengarriff! What have you not to answer for)-" and perhaps when I've made a great name for myself, you'll not think me such an utter fool as you do now."

So they parted-she to fulfil her engagement at a London theatre. Her part was not an onerous one, but in it she had to read a letter aloud to her stage father, and to despatch a telegram and to sing a song. The letter she knew by heart, but there were two words in it that would not trip glibly from her tongue, though she hammered away at the pronunciation of them incessantly. These two words. were "inexplicable equanimity," and the cruel part of the case was