use it requires a
less high skill to raise a laugh than to move by passion or pathos.
Partly, too, because farces are short, and amateurs can make no
greater mistake than to weary their audience.

If you prefer "dress pieces" and dramas to farces or burlesque, let
some competent person curtail the one you choose to a suitable length.

The manager of juvenile theatricals should never forget the wisdom
embodied in Sam Weller's definition of the art of letter-writing, that
the writer should stop short at such a point as that the reader should
"wish there wos more of it."

Yours, &c.,

BURNT CORK.

SNAP-DRAGONS.

SNAP-DRAGONS.

A TALE OF CHRISTMAS EVE.

MR. AND MRS. SKRATDJ.

Once upon a time there lived a certain family of the name of Skratdj.
(It has a Russian or Polish look, and yet they most certainly lived in
England.) They were remarkable for the following peculiarity. They
seldom seriously quarrelled, but they never agreed about anything. It
is hard to say whether it were more painful for their friends to hear
them constantly contradicting each other, or gratifying to discover
that it "meant nothing," and was "only their way."

It began with the father and mother. They were a worthy couple, and
really attached to each other. But they had a habit of contradicting
each other's statements, and opposing each other's opinions, which,
though mutually understood and allowed for in private, was most trying
to the bystanders in public. If one related an anecdote, the other
would break in with half-a-dozen corrections of trivial details of no
interest or importance to any one, the speakers included. For
instance: Suppose the two dining in a strange house, and Mrs. Skratdj
seated by the host, and contributing to the small-talk of the
dinner-table. Thus:--

"Oh yes. Very changeable weather indeed. It looked quite promising
yesterday morning in the town, but it began to rain at noon."

"A quarter-past eleven, my dear," Mr. Skratdj's voice would be heard
to say from several chairs down, in the corrective tones of a husband
and a father; "and really, my dear, so far from being a promising
morning, I must say it looked about as threatening as it well could.
Your memory is not always accurate in small matters, my love."

But Mrs. Skratdj had not been a wife and a mother for fifteen years,
to be snuffed out at one snap of the marital snuffers. As Mr. Skratdj
leaned forward in his chair, she leaned forwa