OUR GOGGLERS.
First Girl in grandmotherly spectacles (to second ditto). "How frightfully out of date that woman is. Fancy—lorgnettes!"
THE HAPPY HOOTS.
Yes, it is nearly twelve now. In ten minutes we shall hear the bells—I mean the hooters. I wonder if there were hooters when Tennyson wrote those popular lines about ringing in the New Year. Very likely he didn't hear them if there were, as there's nothing to show that he ever really stayed up late enough to see the New Year in. It's a pity, because the hooters would have fitted in to that poem most beautifully. The hooting idea is just what is wanted to give a dramatic contrast to the sugary ringing business.
"Ring out the false, ring in the true"
doesn't convince somehow; it's too impartial. One doesn't say to the footman, "Show the Rector up, please, and show this blackmailer out," even at the Lyceum. One says, "Kick this black-hearted hound out," and the footman realises then that you have something against the fellow. Just so one doesn't gather from the above line that the poet has any strong preference as between the false and the true, except that there is no good rhyme to "the false," unless you can count "waltz"; but what about—