to be on familiar terms wilh all of them. The
first part of the performance consisted of singing
and dancing, and an exhibition of ventriloquism
by a young man who had adapted, with
considerable success, the ventriloquial entertainment
of Colonel Stodare. Master Whelks,
for the small charge of one penny, was treated
to the gentleman on the roof, the gentleman in
the cellar, and the stolid person under the chair
who won't be quiet; and Master Whelks was
greatly delighted, as he was bound to be. The
songs were decent enough; but they were
mostly about the troubles of courtship and
marriage: a theme that rather anticipated
Master Whelks's experience. In a stage Irishman,
who came on with a caved-in hat and a
short stick to sing and dance, we recognised
the gentleman who had achieved the walloping-
about performance for "fadges" in the New
Cut. He was not so coarse and brutal here.
He felt that he was before a superior audience.
His habit of soliciting the encouragement of
"fadges" led him, in the middle of his
performance, to point to a spot on the scene, as
being a good mark to aim at, but a derisive
laugh from Master Whelks reminded him that
he was in Whitechapel, not in the New Cut.

The dancing was worse than the singing, but
both were bad enough. The boys themselves
could have sung and danced just as well, at
random. Thus it is, nearly always, at places of
entertainment instituted for Mr. Whelks. There
are a pay-place, a house, seats, lights, a stage, and
persons to tread it; but what should be the
purpose of all this, an artistic and pleasant
entertainment, is utterly wanting. The performances
at this unlicensed gaff concluded with a stage-
play "comprising the whole strength of the
company." It was a condensed version of the Golden
Farmer; the chief elements of interest being
robbery and murder. Master Whelks, however,
seemed to be most entertained by the comic
underplot, carried on by a rascally servant and
a waiting-maid, whose costume at home and
abroad was that of the ballet. The comic man
was hungry. Strange to say, hunger is always
comic in hungry neighbourhoods. It doesn't
go for much, in the way of a joke, where the
audience comes in from a six o'clock dinner of
six courses. There was a great roar when the
comic man said that be hadn't had anything to
eat for three weeks but a penn'orth of peas-
pudd'n and a fagot. The fact that the Golden
Farmer can be played anywhere at this time of
day is a sufficient proof of the utter stagnation of
theatrical affairs. Why on earth should this
absurd story be handed down through generations?
Simply because in theatrical affairs there is little
or no enterprise. A piece once written and acted,
be it never so bad, is a piece for all time. Literature
of this class in books, has long gone out;
but it still remains on the stage. If Mr.
Mudie acted on the theatrical principle, he
would send us the Farmer of Inglewood Forest
when we ask for Felix Holt, the Radical.

When we returned to the theatre the act-
drop had fallen upon the first act of Life As
It is. The last two acts, however, were quite
sufficient to prove that the title was a misnomer.
There were two heroes, George Travis and
Charles Travis, twin-brothers, personated by
one and the same actor; there was a heroine
May Bates, "the victim of Fate." There were
Chaffer, "a swell, a cheap John, and a felon;"
Bob Gates, "a child of Nature, but not so
green as he looks;" Patty Roselips, "a young
girl from the country, rosy and rollicking,"
&c. George Travis is a well-to-do young
man in love with May Bates, the victim, and
Charles, his brother, is a seedy, dissolute
fellow, on the verge of crime. The great
effect created by the actor was in going off
one minute as the smart George, and coming
back next minute as the seedy Charles. This so
puzzles the comic man, that he says Charles
must be the devil or Doctor Foster, and as for
their mother, she "doesn't know t'other from
which." The difficulties that stand in the way
of the marriage of George with May Bates, are
not very clearly set forth, but they have
something to do with a stony old father, who softens
subsequently without sufficient cause. The
difficulty in the way of the marriage of Bob
Gates, the child of Nature, with the rollicking
Patty Roselips, there can be no mistake about,
as it is explicitly stated by Bob Gates on several
occasions, that he can't get married until he
has money enough to buy a four-post bedstead.
Charles Travis steps over the verge of crime
in an attempt to rob May Bates's father,
and is wounded by a pistol-shot fired by his
companion, the swell, the cheap John, and the
felon. He seeks shelter with his mother, who
has not seen him for years, and she, with the
aid of George, ships Charles off to Australia.
At the conclusion of the act, half a scene is
drawn off to show a nondescript-looking vessel
hopping off to Australia with the unhappy
Charles. In the third act, Mr. Whelks is not
a little astonished to find all the personages of
the drama in Australia, including Bob Gates;
who, as he is married to Patty the rollicking, and
is blest with a son, seems to have made up the
money and got over the bedstead difficulty. The
comic man (his invariable destiny) keeps an inn.
Thither comes the swellish but felonious Chaffer,
who has found a large nugget of gold at the
diggings. When Bob refuses him another bottle,
he presents two loaded pistols at Bob's head.
On the second bottle Chaffer gets drunk in half a
minute—the progress of intoxication on the
stage is wonderfully rapid—and wants to kiss
Bob's wife, forgetting his pistols on the table.
It is now Bob's turn to present the two pistols
at Chaffer, who is baffled, and shrinks off
without his nugget, which the virtuous Bob—now
turning not to be so green as he looks—
quietly pockets. May now appears at the antipodes
in the identical straw hat which she
wore in England years before. She is in search
of George. She meets Charles quite promiscuously
on the great continent, and mistakes him
for his brother. Finding that he is married,
she is likely to die of a broken heart, when
another mode of ending her existence is offered
to her. Chaffer comes on, and for no concievable