So, when Uncle Ned's humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt, he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have I been so profoundly impressed with the difficulties of an art which depends for its success (financial, that is to say) on the satisfaction of tastes that have nothing in common beyond the crudest elements of human nature.

Mr. Ainley had things all his own way. Between him, the romancer of the light heart and the free fancy, and his brother, the millionaire tradesman of the tough hide, there was the clash of temperaments but never the clash of intellects. ("Nobody with a sense of humour," says Uncle Ned, "ever made a million pounds.") That the man with the iron will should be beaten at the last with his own weapons, and brought to see the lifelong error of his ways by a violent philippic that must have surprised the speaker hardly less than his audience, was the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse, from which he emerges unrecognisably reformed.

I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully fantastic and inconsequent humour of the first half of the play. Often it was the things that Mr. Ainley was given to say; but even more often, I think, it was the incomparable way he said them, with those astonishingly swift and unforeseen turns of gesture and glance and movement which are his peculiar gift. Now and then, to remind us of his versatility, he may turn to sentiment or even tragedy, but light comedy remains his natural mÉtier.

If I have a complaint to make it is that Uncle Ned's studied refusal to understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece, who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play was too good to need assistance from this sort of titillation.

Mr. Randle Ayrton, as the plutocratic pachyderm, kept up his thankless end with a fine imperviousness; and Miss Irene Rooke, in the part of his secretary, played, as always, with a very gracious serenity, though I wish this charming actress would pronounce her words with not quite so nice a precision. Miss Edna Best was an admirable flapper, with just the right note of gaucherie.

As Mears, Mr. Claude Rains was not to be hampered by the methods dear to the detective of convention; he looked like an apache and behaved, rather effectively, like nothing in particular.

The Dawkins of Mr. G. W. Anson knew well the first duty of a stage-butler, to keep coming on whenever a stop-gap is wanted; but he had also great personal qualities, to say nothing of his astounding record of forty years' service in a house where strong liquor was only permitted for "medicinal" purposes.

O. S.

"The Young Person in Pink."

What the chair-man said about The Young Person in Pink who had been hanging about the Park every morning for a week was that nowadays you couldn't really tell. He thought on the whole she was all right. The balloon-woman was certain that with boots like that she must be a 'ussy; but then she had refused to buy a balloon. As a matter of fact she couldn't, being broke to the world. And worse. For she had arrived at Victoria Station unable to remember who she was or where she came from, ticketless, a few shillings in her purse. She had murmured "Season" at the barrier and had taken rooms at the Carlton because she had a queer feeling she had been there before. Her things had a coronet on them. The rest was a blank.

Of course nobody believed her; the women were scornful, the men not quite nice, till very young Lord Stevenage, the one that was engaged to a notorious baby-snatcher, Lady Tonbridge—in a high fever he'd unfortunately said "Yes"—meets her, and you guess the rest. No, you don't. You couldn't possibly guess Mrs. Badger, relict of an undertaker and now in the old-clothes line, who has social ambitions. (I must here say in parenthesis that Mrs. Badger is a double stroke of genius on the part both of Miss Jennings the author and of Miss Sydney Fairbrother. You don't know which to admire most, the things she says [Miss J.] or the way she says them [Miss S. B.]. Honours divided and high honours at that.)

"Art in Washing—with economy.—Ladies desiring personal attention are invited to apply to —— Laundry."—Daily Paper.

No "imperfect ablutioner" (vide "The Mikado") should miss this opportunity.

"Fun undiluted and rippling is the main feature of The Little Visiters, and not a single feature of the author's book is lost in the process of dramatisation."—Weekly Paper.

Except, apparently, the title.