THE MUSIC HALL AS OTHERS WOULD SEE IT.
(With compliments to those it may concern)
The entrepreneur had conducted, the visitor here, there, and everywhere. He had shown the stage, the auditorium, and the tea and cake-room. Every feature of the reformed scheme had been duly explained.
"No singing allowed in the entertainment?" queried the visitor.
"None at all," was the reply; "we consider that music is a mistake. Of course same songs are good, but as others are bad it is better to prohibit them altogether, and thus escape the risk of a mistaken choice."
"And no dancing?"
"Of course not. That would be entirely contrary to our principles. If people require exercise they can walk or run."
"But how about the poetry of motion? How about the grace of movement?"
"We desire to have nothing to do with either," returned the entrepreneur. "You see our object is to have an entirely new entertainment, and consequently we reject all items, that have figured in other programmes."
"Well, well," murmured the visitor; "you may be right. But I should like to see the result. I will wait until the performance is given, and judge for myself."
"I am sorry I cannot assist you to carry out this scheme," declared the Manager of the Progressive Music Hall, "because we are not going to have an entertainment."
"No, of course not. Of course it won't be an entertainment in the usual sense of the word. It can't naturally be an entertainment—I should have said a performance."
"But we give neither entertainment nor performance."
"Why not?"
Then came the answer, which was more convincing than surprising—"Because, my dear Sir, we can't get an audience!"
The New Hotel on the Embankment.— Our Dear Daily News, in a recent note, says that the "Hôtel Magnifique" (as it ought to be called, reminding us as the D. D. N. justly observes of the Hôtel Splendide in Paris) has been already styled by its proprietors The Cecil. "The Cecil!"—"There is only one in it," observes bluntly a certain well-known comedian, quoting the song "There's only one in it, that's me!" And pleased is Arthur Cecil with the gratuitous advertisement. But The Cecil! Good name for club, not for hotel. The Sarum sounds too ecclesiastical; so we return to The Magnificent, which can be familiar in our mouths as "The Mag." "Omne ignotum pro magnifico."
"Odd notice!" observed a short-sighted man, who had been cursorily inspecting a card stuck up in a Restaurant's. "What is?" inquired his friend. "Why this," was the short-sighted one's reply, pointing to the notice; "'No charge for changing plates.' Who ever heard of——" But here his friend broke in, "Why, you noodle, you've been reading a photographer's advertisement!"
