Once again I salute you, oh actors of the Cambridge A. D. C., and congratulate you on your rendering of The Rivals—no mean task for a body of amateur actors. Specially do I note the admirably and grotesquely humorous impersonation of Mrs. Malaprop by Mr. R. A. Austen Leigh. Will the elaborate Wildean paradoxes have to a future generation the freshness and the laughter-provoking qualities of Mrs. Malaprop's derangements? I doubt it. At Cambridge the other day I saw a learned Doctor of Letters in convulsions over the Malapropian sallies. Will a Doctor of Letters towards the end of the next century be seen to smile over Oscar's inversions? Mr. R. Balfour made an excellent Bob Acres, broad in his characterisation, self-possessed and clear. I should have called him, however, a trifle too smart and modish in dress. Mr. Geikie was very effective in the rages of Sir Anthony, and Mr. Watson played well as Jack Absolute. Admirable, too, was the Fag of Mr. Talbot. The leading ladies were, as usual, miracles of curls and divine complexions. Yet did their voices and their hands bewray them. We were fortunately spared the gloomy maunderings of Julia and Faulkland. "Hearty congratters," as they say at the sister university.
A Vagrant.
Her Puzzle.—"I recollect," quoth Mrs. R., "a sort of riddle that used to puzzle me when I was a child, and I can't say I quite see the answer now. It is this: 'If Dick's uncle is Tom's son, what relation is Dick to John?'"
"The Right Man in the Wrong Place."—Labby, M.P., in the Unionist Lobby, Monday, February 18.
Son of Toil. "Ow yus, me an' my Missus gits on fust-clorss tergither, Sir. Reg'lar chummy, we ore. I tells 'er everythink!"