unchanged throughout the play,
served a number of useful purposes. It made excuse for the intermittent
apparition (otherwise inexplicable) of a little woodland figure that
played upon a pipe. Its proximity to an hotel afforded occasion for meal
after meal _en plein air_. Its proximity to a University Town encouraged
the frequent passage of German students, vivacious and vocal; also the
convenient appearance of any foreign resident or visitor at a moment's
notice. Its Statue of Venus (fully draped) afforded an authentic
incitement to the making of love. Its environs enabled Mr. Jerome to
dispose of his puppets whenever their presence became undesirable. They
simply said, "Let us stroll in the woods;" or "Come for a walk with me,"
and he was rid of them. Finally the "Ancient Grove" contained a central
patch of boscage in whose cover one of the duellists, arriving on the
_terrain_ a little before the time, remained _perdu_ in slumber,
undisturbed by a loud conversation carried on within a few feet of him
by all the other parties to the combat.

Indeed the scenery put in some good work, and I really don't know what
we should have done without it.

_The Great Gamble_ was, of course, the lottery of marriage. But for some
of us it meant the risk we ran in attending the first night of a play by
Mr. Jerome after our bitter experience of his _Rowena in Search of a
Father_. To say that his present work is an improvement upon his last
would be to damn it with a fainter praise than it deserves. _The Great
Gamble_ is a strange and inscrutable medley, but it has its exhilarating
moments, and the humour of its dialogue, though it is mitigated by the
Professor's contributions, is worthy of a much better design.

O. S.

* * * * *

"Now that Miss Cecil Leitch has won the Ladies' Golf
Championship after seven years' unsuccessful striving, it may be
suggested that she might alter the spelling of her name to
Leach. Just to show how she stuck to it!"--_Glasgow Evening
News._

The writer should have stuck to his dictionary.

* * * * *

"It was officially stated yesterday that Dr. Herbert William
Moxon, the son of a former prominent Unionist in West
Derbyshire, had consented to address a meeting of Liberals with
a view to his adaptation as Liberal candidate for West
Derbyshire."

_Daily Mail._

These adaptable politicians.