ing be given to the public?
_A._ Oh dear, no! Land, as RUDYARD KIPLING would say, "is
quite another story!"

* * * * *

COUNSEL'S MOTTO (_objected to in the Committee Rooms_).--"Absence
makes the fees grow stronger."

* * * * *

[Illustration: NOT CAUGHT YET!

MASTER LONDON-COUNTY-COUNCIL. "IF I CAN ONLY GET NEAR ENOUGH!!!"]

* * * * *

OPERATIC NOTES.

[Illustration: "Oh, I mustn't Catch the Speaker's Eye!"]

The first night of the Mixed Italian Opera Season, 1891. We open
with GLUeCK's _Orfeo_, and, in a strong opera-glass, we drink to
DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS, and say, "Here's G-luck t'you!" Nothing can
begin the season better than the appearance of GIULIA and SOFIA
RAVOGLI--specially GIULIA--"There's something 'bout GIULIA So werry
peculia'"--(_Old Song_)--in this short Opera, that is to say, an Opera
which should be short were it not for the "waits" between the Scenes
and Acts, which, as it is in the nature of weights to do, must always
make even the lightest Opera seem heavy. Mlle. GIULIA sang and acted
perfectly. Her rendering of the last song was most pathetic. This
delicious melody the audience would have had over and over again, not
in merry mood, for we are never merry in the hearing of such sweet
music, but in appreciative sympathy with the woes of _Orpheus_ so
sweetly expressed. The lines in _Bombastes_ rise in my memory:--

"So ORPHEUS sang of old, or poets lie,
And--"

On consideration, however, I will _not_ quote the remainder, but will
say simply that we were all charmed. Welcome, at the commencement of
another season, to Mlle. BAUERMEISTER, appearing as _Cupid_. To-morrow
she will be _Dame Marta_! Wonderful! "Time cannot stale her infinite
variety." How is it, O _premiere danseuse_, my pretty pretty Polly
Hop-kino PALLADINO, Principal Shade among all these Happy but Shady
characters, that thou didst not choose a classic dance in keeping with
the character of the music and of the ideal--I distinctly emphasise
"_ideal_"--surroundings? What oughtest thou to represent in the
Elysian Fields? A Salvationised "Dancing Girl," without bonnet and
tambourine? Nay, not so; but rather the very spirit of classic grace
and elegance, moving rhythmically to melodious measure. In such a
Scene as this ought to be, we want as much idealism as your graceful
art can lend, otherwise we are only among our old