One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however,
probably kill him. One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile.
He is so good, so child-like, so unworldly. He realizes one's ideal of
Christianity.

THE GOOD OLD MAN.

He has lost his wife. But he knows where she is--among the angels!

She isn't all gone, because the heroine has her hair. "Ah, you've got
your mother's hair," says the good old man, feeling the girl's head all
over as she kneels beside him. Then they all wipe away a tear.

The people on the stage think very highly of the good old man, but they
don't encourage him much after the first act. He generally dies in the
first act.

If he does not seem likely to die they murder him.

He is a most unfortunate old gentleman. Anything he is mixed up in seems
bound to go wrong. If he is manager or director of a bank, smash it goes
before even one act is over. His particular firm is always on the verge
of bankruptcy. We have only to be told that he has put all his savings
into a company--no matter how sound and promising an affair it may
always have been and may still seem--to know that that company is a
"goner."

No power on earth can save it after once the good old man has become a
shareholder.

If we lived in stage-land and were asked to join any financial scheme,
our first question would be:

"Is the good old man in it?" If so, that would decide us.

When the good old man is a trustee for any one he can battle against
adversity much longer. He is a plucky old fellow, and while that trust
money lasts he keeps a brave heart and fights on boldly. It is not until
he has spent the last penny of it that he gives way.

It then flashes across the old man's mind that his motives for having
lived in luxury upon that trust money for years may possibly be
misunderstood. The world--the hollow, heartless world--will call it a
swindle and regard him generally as a precious old fraud.

This idea quite troubles the good old man.

But the world really ought not to blame him. No one, we are sure, could
be more ready and willing to make amends (when found out); and to put
matters right he will cheerfully sacrifice his daughter's happiness and
marry her to the villain.

The villain, by the way, has never a penny to bless himself with, and
cannot even pay his own debts, let alone helping anybody else out of a
scrape. But the good old man does not think of this.

Our own personal theor