lay lies not so much in the plot--worked
out mechanically, with one or two saving touches of ingenuity, to
a conventional conclusion--as in the character of this lovable old
boot-maker, whose single aim in life was to give his son the best that
money could buy. His heart, I think, began by being fairly large, but
got contracted through specialising in this passion. Snobbery is alien
to his nature, but he becomes a snob for _Tammas's_ sake. Stubborn and
domineering with others, he is as putty in the boy's hands. He has no
use for his other child--a girl. She, like himself, must be sacrificed
if it suits the young gentleman--as it did.

I won't say that any very nice psychological subtlety was needed
for the portrayal of a character whose ruling motive was so clearly
advertised, but it had its lights and shadows, responsive to changing
conditions, and Mr. CALVERT was quick to seize them all.

The boy's part was too unsympathetic to be played easily. But he had
one saving virtue; he never practised his snobbery on the old man who
encouraged it. He still called him "Daddalums," and that, I take it,
was what the papers would call an "acid test" of his piety. As his
fortunes declined Mr. LISTER rose to the occasion. The tighter the
corner the better he coped with it.

Mr. HENDRIE'S _Fergus McLarnie_, whose people must have migrated to
Northampton from the neighbourhood of Thrums, was an admirable crony;
but he insisted too much and too deliberately on a Scottish accent
that made for obscurity. In a broader vein Miss AGNES THOMAS played
the part of _Ellen, the Maid_ (another Scot), with a humour which even
an Englishman (like myself) found no difficulty in appreciating. Miss
EDYTH OLIVE, as the hero's neglected daughter, acted with a very nice
self-repression, which was all that could be expected of her rather
colourless part.

The first-night audience was very warm in its appreciation. Yet I
must doubt whether a play that is chiefly concerned with the
highly-developed paternity of a boot-manufacturer will make a very
poignant appeal to the sentiment of the public.

For one thing they may find the love-interest too sketchy. Of the
boy's two fiancees one was impossible, and the other (_Rose_) just a
perfunctory phantom that flitted vaguely from time to time across
the stage. She must have known it was a play of father and son, where
girls didn't really count. Poor _Rose_, so unassertive! How modestly
she kept herself in t