ir branch the _leg_-itimate drama.

In the mid-Victorian days the advertisements of drama were trifling.
Thirty years ago the photographs of Miss Maud Branscombe, a real beauty,
but not an actress of great quality, created quite a stir, and made her
name well known throughout the land; and the publication of them was,
probably, the beginning of the present deluge. The two illustrated
papers of importance published pictures only of actresses who by means
of their talent had made a genuine sensation; and therefore but few were
presented in the year. Nowadays there are from thirty to forty
photographs a week in the illustrated papers of actresses--using the
term in its widest sense.

Many young ladies, who twenty years ago could not by any decent means
have got their likenesses exhibited to the public except in shop-window
photographs, now simper at us fifty-two times a year, or more, and are
sometimes described as "the celebrated actress," though a few of them
never get beyond the dignity of a single silly line in the book of a
musical hodge-podge. Miss XXX smiles at us from her 40-h.p. "bloater
car" which has cost a larger sum than eight years of her salary, and the
simple-minded think she must be a great star to be able to afford such a
luxury, not knowing that she herself is the luxury which someone else is
unable to afford. The humble old devices are now stale tricks. The
actress in search of notoriety does not lose her jewels: she brings an
action which is reported at great length, and during it half-a-dozen
members of the profession get a splendid chance of blowing their own
trumpets. There was a cruel case a little while ago: one of these
"damaged darlings" of the stage did lose her jewels--which had cost
about as much as that admirable actress Amy Roselle earned in her
honourable career with a tragic ending--but felt bound to keep silent
about the loss, since to have mentioned it would have seemed like
"out-of-date" advertising. "View jew," she called it.

It would be unfair to suggest that the ladies have a monopoly, for many
of the actors also are busy in the art of advertisement--some so busy as
to have little time to study the technique of their art. However, they
get rather less help from the illustrated papers, for reasons not quite
obvious, if it be correct, as some suppose, that the picture journals
are bought for the--not by--the ladies of the family.

The puff system is disadvantageous to the managers