Directors. "But what
puzzles me," observed the excellent lady, "is a paragraph headed
'Disposal of the Surplice.' I know that, years ago, there was a
'surplice difficulty.' But I thought that had been disposed of. Or,"
she added, brightening up, as if struck by a happy solution of the
difficulty, "does it mean that the Clerical Assurance Society means to
take in washing? Most useful if they do, and so paying."

* * * * *

DEFINITION OF "CHAFF."--The husk of Wit.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "THERE'S THE RUB!"

BILL-POSTER (_uneasily_). "IF THAT PIG DON'T MEAN DEVILTRY, I'M A ----
SEPARATIST!"]

* * * * *

PLAYING OLD HARRY AT THE LYCEUM.

[Illustration: The Magnetic Lady.]

"I once did manage to make a cast correctly," writes ANDREW LANG, in
his charming book anent the sport and pastime of fishing, and if ever
HENRY IRVING made a cast to catch the public, it is now, when he uses
as his bait SHAKSPEARE's _Henry the Eighth_, got up in a style which
emphatically "beats the record," so utterly "regardless of expense" is
it, with well-tried, responsible actors, in what may be called minor
parts, though the majority of the _dramatis personae_ are on a fair
dramatic equality, and with Our ELLEN TERRY, as _Queen Katharine_, and
himself as the great Lord Cardinal.

[Illustration: "Go to," Norfolk and Suffolk!]

The first difficulty that HENRY IRVING had to face--literally to
face--was that by no sort of art could he make up his features to
be an exact portrait of CARDINAL WOLSEY. Personally, I prefer Mr.
IRVING's picture of WOLSEY to the extant portraits, which concur in
representing him as a heavy, jowly-faced man, who might be taken as
a model for one of GUSTAVE DORE'S eccentric-looking ecclesiastics in
the _Contes Drolatiques_, rather than as the living presentment of the
great Chancellor, Statesman, and Churchman who ruled a cruel, crafty,
sensual tyrant, and successfully guided the policy of England at home
and abroad. HENRY IRVING's _Cardinal_ is a grand figure, courtly,
though somewhat too cringing withal, evidently despising the various
means he uses to further the end he has in view, and looking upon the
Lords, Courtiers and all around him as merely puppets, whose strings
he holds to work them as he will.

[Illustration: The Cardinal's _Train de Luxe_.]

Then, after seeing him as Sole Adviser of the Crown, after