p and France, remains open until April 1.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"The Barton Mystery."

One of the most difficult feats of juggling is, I understand, the deft
tossing up and catching of a heavy weight (say a dumb-bell), a very
light weight, such as a champagne cork, together with any old thing of
irregular shape, a bedroom candlestick, for instance. Mr. WALTER
HACKETT'S _The Barton Mystery_ is a most ingenious turn of this sort.

The _fiance_ of the sister of the wife of _Richard Standish, M.P._, is
under sentence of death for the murder of _Mr. Barton_. He happens to be
innocent, though he admits at the trial that he quarrelled violently
with and even threatened _Barton_ on the night of the murder, and his
revolver has been found by the dead man's side. That vindictive relict,
_Mrs. Barton_, is holding back some material evidence which could save
the condemned man, or so _Standish_ thinks, and she is adamant. Now
_Barton_ was unquestionably a bad egg, but the widow doesn't want the
whole world to know it--at least not till she finds the woman. Some
woman, who had incidentally written some, shall we say, very impetuous
love letters, is being shielded. Who is she? Is it _Standish's_ wife,
for instance? Ah!... This is the dumb-bell.

A _Lady Marshall_, the wife of a _Sir Everard Marshall_, a comic
scientist in perpetual flight from his overwhelming spouse, is one of
the sort that finds a new religion every few months and is now in the
first fast furious throes of her latest, which is some form of
psychomania, whereof the high priest is one _Beverley_, a plausible
ringletted charlatan of alcoholic tendencies (_Sludge the Medium_,
without his cringe and snarl), who ekes out his spasmodic visitations of
genuine psychic illumination with the most shameless spoof. This is the
cork.

The candlestick is the dream _motif_, always a ticklish business to
handle, and in this particular case--well, no, I won't be such a
spoil-sport as to go into that, for the chief pleasure of this kind of
an entertainment is the succession of pleasant unexpected shocks which
are deftly administered to the audience by the author.

There were times indeed when the latter nearly dropped his
dumb-bell--times when it was in imminent peril of barging into the cork;
and most certainly the candlestick very nearly slipped out of his hand.
But it just didn't, so you will see that it was really a most
exceptional pie