ised union (as
practised by himself), since a man's wife is there to be kicked, whereas a
mistress is apt to be more exigent of the amenities; you must adopt a more
lover-like attitude if you want to retain her. He also argued brightly in
defence of his proposal to sell his own daughter to any man for a fiver;
let fall a platitude or two in praise of the lot of the undeserving poor;
and (having come in for a fortune) found that charity had lost its
blessedness--that the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin was
only admirable when you did the "touching" yourself. Not bad for a dustman,
but Mr. SHAW has done better.

For the rest the attraction lay in the performance of individual actors
rather than in the stuff of the play. Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL was delicious,
both in her unregenerate state, and even more during the middle phase of
the refining process. She made the Third Act a pure delight. Later, when
she became tragic, she sacrificed something of her particular charm to the
author's insincerity.

Sir HERBERT TREE, always at his best in comedy, was an excellent _Higgins_
in his lighter moods. As for Mr. EDMUND GURNEY, he was far the best dustman
I have ever met. His freedom from scruples, combined with a natural gift
for unctuous and persuasive rhetoric, commanded admiration. _Higgins_,
indeed, who could read potentialities at a glance, considered that he
might, under happier conditions, have gone far toward attaining Cabinet
rank or filling a Welsh pulpit.

Of the others, Mr. PHILIP MERIVALE played the too subsidiary part of
_Colonel Pickering_ with admirable self-repression; and Miss ROSAMOND
MAYNE-YOUNG, as the mother of _Higgins_, was a very gracious figure.

The play was curiously uneven. If one might be permitted to enter and leave
at one's pleasure I would advise you to miss out the desultory First Act.
But if you insist on seeing it then take care to read your programme before
the lights go down and find out that the scene is the porch of a church. I
thought all the time that it was the porch of a theatre. Make sure in the
same way about the Chelsea flat, or you may mistake it for a charming
country cottage. The Second and Third Acts are not to be missed on any
account, but I shouldn't worry about the Fourth. In the Fifth you should go
away for good the moment that the dustman makes his exit. The tedium that
follows is most distressing, and can only be explained as the author's
revenge for your la