So, too, with the maiden. Most girls of fifteen off the stage, so our experience goes, know as much as there is any actual necessity for them to know, Mr. Gilbert notwithstanding; but when we see a young lady of fifteen on the stage we wonder where her cradle is.
The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that the hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love in, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit about in picturesque attitudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do it out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the center, and moonlight.
The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all the time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrow rooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire.
And there is always a tremendous row going on in the house when the comic lovers are making love. Somebody always seems to be putting up pictures in the next room, and putting them up boisterously, too, so that the comic lovers have to shout at each other.
THE PEASANTS.
They are so clean. We have seen peasantry off the stage, and it has presented an untidy—occasionally a disreputable and unwashed—appearance; but the stage peasant seems to spend all his wages on soap and hair-oil.
They are always round the corner—or rather round the two corners—and they come on in a couple of streams and meet in the center; and when they are in their proper position they smile.
There is nothing like the stage peasants' smile in this world—nothing so perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile.
They are so happy. They don't look it, but we know they are because they say so. If you don't believe them, they dance three steps to the right and three steps to the left back again. They can't help it. It is because they are so happy.