LET us talk shop. The slangy proverb which interdicts it is nonsense. What is more pleasant than to hear a painter discourse of his art, a politician of his aërial castles, a novelist of his plots, a journalist of his adventures? Mr. Archibald Forbes has gone all the way to America for the purpose of talking shop on a large scale. Let you and I talk shop. I wish we could make the theme as interesting as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "American Notes," the shoppiest of books and the most delightful. Thackeray's "Roundabout" shop is full of pleasant arrogance. Shakspeare, depend upon it, talked shop with Ben Jonson, just as freely as Samuel Johnson did with Goldsmith, with Cave, and with Boswell. Would you not have liked to have heard the green-room chat of old Drury? To-day, would you not give something to hear Carlyle talk of his work, and Gladstone of the one great measure he still hopes to pass before he joins that other majority to which his peers belong? I call to mind an entire day of "shop " with Henry Irving, in which we discussed acting and audiences, his own audiences in particular. Those who are not well acquainted with Irving cannot quite know how earnest he is in all he does, how "thorough" he is, how broad are his views of art, how tolerant he is of criticism, and how delightful "shop" is in his society. The public has constant proof of the sincerity of his art, convictions and policy; but only those who sit and talk shop with him know how laboriously he lays siege to a new idea, how systematically he works out a given principle. It is a lesson in patience to hear him talk of the honesty of audiences, and the correctness of their judgment. "Depend upon it," he says, "when they condemn us, we are wrong." One day recently, I sat upon the movable stage of the New Madison Square Theatre, in New York, while Mr. Steele Mackaye "talked" theatrical mechanism and architecture to me. What else would I have had him discourse upon? When we first heard of his house in London, we treated the story as a well-elaborated joke, a fairy tale, a sketch of the sort of theatre which might be found in Utopia. A double stage that

has complete "sets," built upon it, and when a change of scene is required, moves up into the roof or down into the cellar; an orchestra stationed above the proscenium, out of sight, which yet plays the incidental music of a drama with perfect facility; an auditorium that suggests a veritable "Temple of Art," with an atmosphere that is hot or cold as the seasons may require; a management that is associated with a religious directorate, and acknowledges in full the power of the stage as a preacher and a teacher; how could we, the cultured and learned of London, dream of a lesson such as this coming from New York? Not talk shop! I hope the builders of future theatres in Europe will have the privilege of Mr. Mackaye's acquaintance. He is sure to talk shop to them; no man who is very much in earnest about the work he loves can help speaking of it to those who can sympathize with him. Mackaye has invented his theatre, built it, written the play which is running there, and has acted most of the parts in the drama. Critics often quarrel with "versatility." Yet Mackaye, the originator of the new theatre which is to revolutionize stage mechanism, can do everything connected with a theatre, from carpentry to play-writing. The late Lord Lytton used to have a great variety of irons in the fire at the same time; but he kept all of them hot, and he would chat about them with learned volubility and scholarly grace.

Arrogance often proves a good thing both in essay writing and conversation. Let me try it for once. It will be a change for a modest man, anyhow. It will not, I fear, be regarded as eccentric, or the success of the new departure would be assured. Society finds a peculiar charm in eccentricity. If this paper had long hair, a mincing manner, and knock-knees; if, in addition, it could pose at a fine lady's feet with a silly couplet on its tongue, then you should see "Stories to Tell" popular with "professional esthetics," who would pass it on to a morbid grave bearing the admiring endorsement of Posthlethwaite and his flatbosomed priestesses of "light and leading." But we will not bow before the altar of a Sexless Art. We will be of the common

Saxon stock, and our shop gossip shall have the flavour of the earth and the flowers in it, and the noise and bustle of the city.

In the days when Mr. Benjamin Webster dominated the hearts and souls of Adelphi audiences, now in "The Willow Copse," now in "Janet Pride," now in "The Dead Heart," he used to tell a dramatic story that I have often promised myself I would write. Webster always believed some one had written it and spoiled it, but I have never come across the narrative, nor met any one who has. I have learnt recently that Charles Dickens used to tell it, as one of Webster's stories, and always with an intense relish. It floats in my mind somewhat vaguely in the following shape:-A certain young fellow named Johnson, a man-about-town, of independent fortune, had the entrée of the green-room. He was looked upon as a harmless, pleasant gentleman, and he was popular with the leading artists of the theatre. One evening a member of the company read from a newspaper an account of a notable and tragic duel in France. The combatants were a practised French duellist and a young Englishman. On the ground the Frenchman had walked up to his opponent, who was little more than a youth, laid his hand on his heart, and said, "Ah! you are courageous, I see. Have you a mother?" "Yes; I am her only son," was the reply. "Ah!" said the duellist, "I am sorry; I shall hit you just there by the third button of your coat; in five minutes from now your mother will be childless!" It was a cruelly true forecast. The English boy was killed. Mr. Johnson, leaning against the green-room mantelshelf, looked up when the reader had finished the recital. "Ah!" he said, "the brute! I will kill him!" I do not profess to repeat the story as Webster told it to me, but to give the spirit of it. The next night Mr. Johnson did not appear in the green-room, nor on the next night, nor for many nights. "Where is Johnson ?" asked everybody. Inquiries were made at his rooms. Nobody knew where Johnson was. By-and-by he re-appeared in his favourite attitude, leaning against the fireplace. "Ah, back again !" exclaimed the artists. "Where have you been?" "To France," said Mr. Johnson. "To France! what for?" They had forgotten the dead boy of the duel. "To kill that fellow!" he said. And so he had. He went to Paris the very night he heard the newspaper paragraph read, found out his man, insulted him, was called out to the same field where his

young countryman had fallen. Prior to the fight he had gone up to the Frenchman, laid his hand on his heart, asked if he had a mother, and indicated the button beneath which he would strike him. The Frenchman fell dead at Johnson's first shot. Whereupon the Englishman had quietly returned to his pleasant corner by the mantelpiece of the green-room fire.

The best of this story is its truth. What a foundation for a novel ! Now cannot you go home at once, dear friend, who art honouring me with thy attention, and make Johnson in love with a woman, who, at the outset, despises him, and who ends by morally prostrating herself at his feet? Johnson adores, say a pure, high-spirited girl, whose head governs her heart more than is good for her peace of mind. She is a desirable woman nevertheless, with bewitching eyes, and a tendency to hero-worship. She flirts wildly, and while she enjoys Johnson's constant devotion, she still regards him as prosaic, unromantic, common-place. He sees her, as he fears, slipping away from him, and he might in desperation be telling her how truly he loves her; how she is bound up in all his hopes; how she is the very centre, the heart, of his ambition; finally begging her to seal his fate for weal or woe. He has somewhat surprised her by his unsuspected eloquence. His earnestness has touched her; but only for a moment. Her head has come to the rescue of her heart, and she takes advantage of the opportunity afforded by a new arrival to set aside the proposal, which is made in a convenient alcove at an evening fête in Mayfair. The lady who has for the moment come between them is a widow in deep mourning. She is leaning on the arm of a Guardsman, who introduces her to Johnson, the prosaic. Madame takes his hand, kisses it, and sobs over it. Johnson leads her aside; and, while they are in earnest conversation, the Guardsman tells mademoiselle the story of the two duels in France. Then heart and head enter into sudden and enthusiastic alliance, and Johnson finds himself a hero in the eyes of the girl he loves, who, upbraiding herself for her want of sense and appreciation, says "Yes" to him, through her tears; and one other happy marriage is added to the list of fortunate alliances. For there are matches of real affection, whatever the cynic may say to the contrary; and there are happy lovers who live to become Darbys and Joans, and die at last within a few days of each other.

There is something eminently attractive, I fancy, in depicting under strong dramatic conditions the conduct of a person, who, beneath a cold or reticent demeanour, holds in disguise a warm, enthusiastic, and emotional nature. This is a common trait of British character, and Americans have it also to a large extent. The English are studiously reticent. With a singular assumption of hard practicability, they are, perhaps, the most romantic and impassioned of people. It is not a little singular that Mr. Tom Taylor should have discovered John Mildmay in France, for it is an eminently English character. Goldsmith's "Man in Black" is not an exaggeration. I know a man of intense acerbity of language and manner, who is addicted to frequent acts of generosity.

The legend of Circe has a strange fascination for story-tellers. It has been said that every person is double-the real self, and the ideal self. A story-teller certainly gets into the habit of looking at things from two points of view. A woman's face has haunted my pen's mind for many a long day. Once I commenced her story; but the tale has yet to be written. There is an exciting and dramatic novel in that cruel yet handsome face. One Friday I went into the snake house of the Zoological Gardens. The serpents were being fed. Snakes, as you know, decline food which they have not killed. The serpent seems to find unmixed satisfaction in the terror of its victims. Neither the anaconda, nor the common boa kills its ducks, its guinea pigs, or its doves at once. They are like wicked lawyers who keep their clients about them, pretending that they never mean to swallow them, estates and all. Now and then, long before the fatal blow is struck, the victims discover their danger, and then it is terrible to watch their terror grow into madness. Pitiful tragedies were being enacted in the serpent house. There was a crowd of spectators. Professor Huxley does not lecture in the snake house, or he would probably have something to say worthy of the occasion about the morbid audiences that are to be found there on feeding days. I was turning away a little sorrowfully at the fate of a pair of doves in the boa cage, when the face of a woman attracted my attention. It was a cold, cruel, beautiful countenance, classic in its severity, with blue eyes, and lips that had no red in them; the nose came down in a straight line from the low forehead, and the nostrils were shapely as if they had been

chiselled; the mouth was rather a contradiction to the other part of the face; it was sensual without a redeeming touch of generosity. Madam's eyes were fixed on the anaconda, which had just uncurled itself, and was sliding towards a couple of fowls that were retreating before it. Suddenly, from an expression of intense expectation, the woman's face was convulsed with anger. The next moment a fan was dashed against the glass to urge the birds into the jaws of the serpent. Madame was tired of waiting for the end. A thrill of indignation stirred me. "This is no proper place for ladies," I said to the keeper, that she might hear me; but she continued to be an unrestrained and active ally of the serpent, intent upon forcing the tragic destiny of the imprisoned birds. Then all of a sudden there was a hurried movement of the snake, a flutter of feathers, and an expiring cry. The anaconda had begun to "feed." The interested spectator gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and casting a haughty and defiant glance at me, moved away. Behold the germ of a story, a drama, a tragedy! Let us cultivate it and grow it. I saw an Italian picture once-a woman's head full of a weird beauty, the hair a cluster of writhing serpents, a face of loving forbiddingness, with the agony of the serpent's tooth in it. From Adrastia my mind wandered to Clytemnestra, who might have worn a similar expression to that of the woman who dashed her fan against the serpent's cage, when she murdered Agamemnon. I had a friend about to be married. He was to introduce me to his fiancée. My imagination gave him the lady of the Zoo for his wife. He was young, rich, wilful. He had met the lady abroad; she was a widow, a countess ; her late husband, one of those foreign noblemen who are sometimes valets in masquerade. I gave him this woman. He married. A year afterwards he died in terrible agony. She had poisoned him for his money. He had made a will in her favour. Nobody suspected her but I, his oldest friend. There were no proofs. I charged her with the crime. She looked at me as she had done a year before in the serpent house. I promised her to devote my life to her destruction. The man she called her uncle turned out to be her paramour. He was a diplomat connected with a great embassy. A season after my friend's death she took Society by storm. She was everywhere. Even royalty brushed shoulders with her. A woman of many accomplish