Chapter 1

Voices._

_First Voice_ (_probably on stage_). "_Who's there?_"

_Second V._ (_probably in auditorium_). I can't see. Is it TREE?

_Third V._ "_Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself._"

_Fourth V._ I wish I could unfold the seat to let people pass.

_Third V._ "_You come most carefully upon your hour._"

_Fourth V._ Why on earth can't people be more punctual?

_First V._ "_'Tis now struck twelve._"

_Fourth V._ About a dozen people have hit my head scrambling past in the dark.

_Third V._ "_For this relief much thanks._"

_Fourth V._ They seem to have got in at last.

_Third V._ "_'Tis bitter cold._"

_Fifth V._ Oh, EDWIN, dear, I do wish they'd send away the ghost, and turn up the lights.

_Third V._ "_Not a mouse stirring._" [_Crash._

_Sixth V._ There goes my opera-glass! Deuce of a job to find it.

_Third V._ "_Stand, ho!_"

_Seventh V._ Bless my soul, Ma'am, are you aware that you're standing on my foot?

_Third V._ "BERNARDO _has my place._"

_Sixth V._ Here's someone taken my seat!

_First V._ "_What, is_ HORATIO _there?_"

_Eighth V._ Hullo, dear boy, how are you? Couldn't see you--but now the light's a bit up--(_&c., &c._).

* * * * *

A CRITERION OF MORALS.--Astutely doing "The Puff Preliminary" in a letter to the papers before the production of _The Fringe of Society_ (i.e., _Le Demi-monde_ freely adapted), Mr. CHARLES WYNDHAM observes that "there is no such class, in any recognisable degree, as the _demi-monde_ in England." "Recognisable" is good, very good, it saves the situation, as of course the _demi-monde_ is _not_, on any account, to be recognised. Cheery CHARLES evidently belongs to that half of the world which never knows what the other half is doing. If _The Fringe_, as it at first went in to the Licenser, had to be trimmed, CHARLES our Friend might have announced his latest version as re-"adapted from the _Fringe_."

* * * * *

"AILING AND CONVALESCENT,"--ORME. [No others count.]

* * * * *

MR. PUNCH'S AGRICULTURAL NOVEL.

BO AND THE BLACKSHEEP.

A STORY OF _THE_ SEX.

(By THOMAS OF WESSEX, Author of "Guess how a Murder feels," "The Cornet Minor," "The Horse that Cast a Shoe," "One in a Turret," "The Foot of Ethel hurt her," "The Flight of the Bivalve," "Hard on the Gadding Crowd," "A Lay o' Deceivers," &c.)

["I am going to give you," writes the Author of this book, "one of my powerful and fascinating stories of life in modern Wessex. It is well known, of course, that although I often write agricultural novels, I invariably call a spade a spade, and not an agricultural implement. Thus I am led to speak in plain language of women, their misdoings, and their undoings. Unstrained dialect is a speciality. If you want to know the extent of Wessex, consult histories of the Heptarchy with maps."]