Enthusiastic Amateur. "OH! HANG IT, CELIA! NOT READY YET! AND I'VE GOT TO PLAY IN THE FIRST QUARTET.. SHARP !" DO LOOK Celia. "Now DON'T FIDGET, MY DEAR! THERE'S LOTS OF TIME! AND IF WE ARE A LITTLE LATE, YOU CAN PLAY A LITTLE FASTER, YOU KNOW. THE FENIANS' RAGING FURY; OR, LEGAL IRELAND'S SUFFERINGS. YE gentlemen of Ireland Who live abroad at ease, A mighty little wonder 'tis All we that would live landlords And little though we should be paid, Whilst the crimson drops do flow. The constant fears and terrors Poor landlords must endure, By day and night their souls affright; While the crimson drops do flow. Whence cometh dire distraction, For death's impending blow, A life when they would seek, In the light, and men's sight, When the crimson drops do flow. Not Irish landlords only Thus live in care and dread; When the crimson drops do flow. And mad mobs, with sham funerals, The seed of murder sow, When the crimson drops do flow. Just statesmen try kind medicines But cannot, with their righteous laws, Our savages implacable, That rampant, roaring, go While the crimson drops do flow. The lifted arm of justice Our forsworn juries check, While the crimson drops do flow. If all conciliation Is wasted, nought remains But to renew an iron rule, With the speed which we need When the crimson drops do flow. AN AWFUL MALLARD ! A COLLEGIATE CHARITY. SOME of you may, possibly, be unaware of the existence of an Institution named "The Royal Dramatic College." If cognisant of its existence, you may not be equally acquainted with its nature. Be pleased, then, to know that it is not a School of Preparation for the Stage. The Royal Dramatic College is no such an establishment as any College in connection with the Universities, or the Professions of Medicine and Surgery. It grants no dramatic degrees. On no persons does it confer the distinctions, for example, of Bachelor of Comedy, or Farce; Master of Tragedy; or Doctor of Burlesque. It has no Professorships of Pantomime, can only have attached to itself exProfessors. But its Members are all of them Fellows, and, for it is a Ladies' as well as a Gentleman's College, they are of either sex. They are all fellows in old age, or at least in superannuation, used-up actors and actresses, who, but for the College wherein they reside and are maintained, would be fellows in want; perhaps even fellows in the workhouse-that place of punishment in which modern British Christianity afflicts the Poor. In the Royal Dramatic College these fellows play out the Fifth Act of the Drama of Life. In short, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Royal Dramatic College is a sort of secular convent, or, we may say, civil barrack for aged and necessitous members of the dramatic profession, supported by voluntary contributions. Or, call it, if you will, an eleemosynary hotel. It is not a lofty hotel; differs from that style of hotel in one serious particular. WHAT stories are told by the electric wire! Here is one of them It wants a "lift." The Era thus speaks of it :telegraphed from Paris the other day : "The Journal Officiel of this morning announces that all public receivers and collectors of taxes will be allowed to receive payments in Papal coins until the 30th of April next, at the rate of ninety-one centimes per franc." Referring to this announcement, of course in the belief of it, the Post observes: "By a curious coincidence we remark that the French Government has just decided on taking no base coin from Rome. The Papal Government had protested that its issue was as good as the French, but the inexorable logic of chemistry has demonstrated that the Roman lira is only worth ninety-one centimes, and not a hundred, and at ninety-one per franc only will it be received in France." "Did you ever see a wild goose a floatin' on the Ocean?" sings not LONGFELLOW, but another fellow, LONGFELLOW's ebony fellowcreature, and countryman in Old Zip Coon. Venturing to parody that mighty line, let us ask,-"Did you ever see a wild duck a flyin' through the air?" The biggest you can ever have seen was a mere teal to the above-cited canard. "THE ROYAL DRAMATIC COLLEGE. assistance in order to enable the Council to regularly pay the pensions of the "It is with extreme regret that we hear this Institution is much in need of residents of the College, and meet other expenses. A meeting of the Council has just been held, to consider the best means of raising ways and means, a series of morning and other special performances being proposed." You are, 'doubtless, Ladies and Gentlemen, most of you playgoers, and of course willing to combine with your own amusement the additional pleasure of affording succour to others who, many or most of them, have amused yourselves, and, even in these days of the unintellectual, unideal, and idiotic drama, may perhaps have occasionally elevated your thoughts and feelings. Hear further, then, that :— "Already MR. CHATTERTON (who has handsomely offered to pay all exMR. B. WEBSTER, MR. ABRAHAMS. MRS. C. PITT, MR. HOLLINGSHEAD, and penses for the morning performance on the 12th of March,) MISS OLIVER, other Managers, have agreed to put their houses at the disposal of the Council, an example which will no doubt be followed by others, and a series of brilliant performances may therefore shortly be expected, which, we feel certain, will be well patronised." The Papal lire base coin? Impious aspersion on the Government of PIO NONO! Whopper, as the schoolboys say; set about for the purpose of suggesting analogies as obvious as they are false. We, whilst you help to confer, a benefit in attending any of those projected And should it be impracticable, for reasons, by any of you, to realise, however, dear DR. MANNING, will grant, and maintain too, that every performances, allow the Era, still further, to say to you:— production of the Papal mint is alike genuine. If the logic of Chemistry is inexorable, the logicians are excommu- "In the meantime money is wanting, so we have determined at once to nicable. Chemistry has demonstrated, by its logic, that the Roman open a special fund, to be called 'THE ERA DRAMATIC COLLEGE FUND,' lira is only worth ninety-one centimes, has it? Ah! Chemistry may towards which we shall be happy to receive subscriptions, and which we shall also persevere in demonstrating that a given object is composed hand over to the Council of Management.” mainly of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon-elementary substances. Chemistry be-anathema! None but the most successful players can possibly save the means of self-support in decent retirement from the stage. Even the very supernumeraries you, Ladies and Gentlemen, would not willingly let starve -or die half-starved in an Infirmary which might be that of St. Pancras. You may help to keep many a meritorious but indigent perAT a ball the other evening given by the PRINCESS MATHILDE, to former, past work, out of that, or some other lazar-house nearly as bad, celebrate the "coming out" of the PRINCE IMPERIAL by contributing to the support of the Royal Dramatic College. PUNCH. CHARITY IN THE BALL-ROOM. "The EMPRESS was in lemon-coloured silk, with a white tunic looped up à la Paternoster, in diamonds and emeralds. A Paternoster garniture is made in imitation of the beads of a Sister of Charity." Imitation is defined to be the truest form of flattery: but we question if a sister of charity would feel herself much flattered at seeing her beads imitated by diamonds and emeralds. A dress begemmed in this manner may clearly be regarded as a very rich costume, but must also be esteemed a very poor imitation. Scilla Banks and Silly Customers. THE Italian newspapers are full of the ruin caused by the collapse of the bubble Banks of Deposit started at Naples by a certain RUFFO SCILLA, at an interest for loans from five per cent. per month upwards. Now the smash has come, nearly £3,000,000 turns out to have been lost at this pretty little game. Those who, in their anxiety to avoid poverty, took this short cut to riches, are left to meditate the well-known Virgilian proverb "Incidit in Scillam qui vult vitare Charybdim." THE ALTERNATIVE IN IRELAND. WHAT must Government do if forsworn jurymen refuse to convict assassins? Suspend the Habeas Corpus, to be sure, as they cannot suspend the Corpus. THE RIGHT MEDIUM. WHAT paper should Telegrams be written on? Wire-wove post, to be sure. At "When we took office we found that the clerical force in London consisted of 354 clerks and 102 writers, costing altogether £125,242 per annum. this present time we employ 230 clerks and 142 writers, who cost £93.127. There are therefore employed 124 clerks fewer than last year, and that has effected a saving of £32,115." No doubt, in getting rid of those one hundred and twenty-four clerks, as likewise of a great many dockyard workmen, the Government proceeded, as MR. CHILDERS said they did, with all possible consideration. They did the work they engaged to do for the British Public as gently as they could. The British Public ordered the work; the Ministry did but execute, in the mildest way they were able to, the British Public's order. The distress they had to cause in so doing distressed themselves. The profit of both their distress and that of the clerks and workmen will accrue to the British Public. Now then, it may perhaps be deemed not utterly preposterous, absurd, and irrelevant, not altogether idiotically weak, not an absolute fool's entirely inadmissible question, to ask any individual member of the British Public how much happier he feels for the national gain of £32,115, saved by discharging one hundred and twenty-four clerks, and how much misery, on the other hand, has probably been inflicted on each of those clerks by that saving? Is there any man Jack who can aver that he expects to get so much relief from taxation, and consequently so much joy, rapture, ecstasy, beatitude, by the saving which has been effected in dismissed Admiralty Clerks', and Dockyard Workmen's wages, that he acquiesces in owing it to the beggary to which dismissal has reduced them? Is it too simply a bray of interrogation to ask, finally, whether the I BELIEVE CHEAP. AT THE MONEY. The jury, by the judge informed, The measure thus of damages For quodding him is seen, Who knows what of not quodding him The damages had been? And as, had MURPHY been left free Please, MR. JUSTICE CLEASBY, NOW IMPROVEMENT ON FURBELOW. AMONG "Fashions for March," in the course of a "detailed description of a number of dresses suitable for various occasions," Le Follet specifies : "A costume of black poult de soie, with a crossway flounce, headed by three rows of velvet." Flounces, many of them, have for a long time been used to sweep crossings, not however designedly, perhaps. But now we see that some milliner has devised a regular crossway flounce, headed, apparently with a special view to the purpose it is intended to serve, with three rows of velvet. Reason and economy, however, suggest that, instead of being headed by three rows of velvet, this flounce should be tailed with one row of broom. necessity for immediate retrenchment is so urgent that the British Public cannot afford to let its ex-clerks and ex-workmen die out upon retiring allowances, as it lets its ex-Chancellors, and other ex-Ministers of the Crown? Perhaps there would be even economy in forbearance order to go to the expense of treating the under-servants of the State from some saving, of which no one individual could feel the benefit, in as considerately as the upper, and so conciliate numbers among the working classes. AIR-POISONING v. AIRE-POISONING. (Before VICE-CHANCELLOR SIR W. M. JAMES.) THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL v. MAYOR, ALDERMEN, and BURGESSES OF LEEDS. "This was a Sewage Case, and came before the Court on an information for the purpose of restraining the Defendants (the Corporation of Leeds) from. polluting the river Aire."-Law Report, Wednesday, March 2. HAS JAMES no compunction, laying Leeds 'neath injunction? Dangerous and Expensive "Freaks." IN an action for compensation for injuries received in an accident on the Great Northern Line, the Government Inspector, according to the Pall Mall Gazette, stated that in railway accidents the carriages frequently had "freaks" which it was impossible to explain by scientific means. A statement like this makes one ponder whether there is not another, and still more positive, cause of railway accidents-the "freaks" of railway management, which it is impossible to explain by any means whatever. |