r 1904, at the height of the controversy
over Protection."--_Sunday Times._

As Lord SALISBURY is generally supposed to have died in 1903, Sir ARTHUR
CONAN DOYLE has been requested to investigate the incident.

* * * * *

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.

[Illustration: THE LAST MAN WAS IN AND WITH ONLY ONE RUN WANTED--]

[Illustration: SMITH, OF ALL PEOPLE, DROPPED A CATCH.]

[Illustration: HE STOLE AWAY--]

[Illustration: BUT HIS SIN FOLLOWED HIM.]

[Illustration: HE DECIDED--]

[Illustration: TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.]

[Illustration: AFTER MANY YEARS HE RETURNED.]

[Illustration: "GOOD HEAVENS, SMITH, I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU SINCE YOU DROPPED
THAT CATCH AT THE CIRCLE."]

[Illustration: "YES, I ONCE SAW HIM PLAY WHEN I WAS QUITE A LAD. ON THAT
OCCASION HE HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO DROP A CATCH."]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"HIS LADY FRIENDS."

The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its
setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical
considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify
its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to
national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or
you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage
purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But
to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs.
NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American
setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two
actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent,
is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence.

However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really
matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory
facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous
as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his
guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition,
who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of
knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary
distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine."

[Illustration: "I want to spread a little sunshine."

_James Smith_ ... Mr.