He chatters about love of “art,”
      This actor’s “method,” that one’s “school,”
    And pits the stock against the star,
      With Contrast as his favorite rule. 
    He freights the columns of the press
      With praise and blame alike mephitic,
    And names the burden a critique—­
      And that’s the oyster-supper critic.

    To-day he dines with opera-bouffe,
      To-morrow breakfasts with burlesque,
    And tights and tinsel, face to face,
      Encounters, pink and picturesque. 
    Nor frown, if, in next week’s review,
      His gropings after the artistic
    Should crop out into verse, and take
      The form of some SWINBURNIAN distich.

    At night he flits from box to box
      Or stands and gossips in the lobby,
    With jest and gesture fast and free,
      And tout-ensemble neat and nobby. 
    And whilst he eyes the debutante,
      And first resolves to praise, then damn her,
    New York no other critic boasts
      So good at heart, so bad at grammar.

    But should some fair friend grace the stage,
      Of praise he is not too abstemious,
    But shares, alas! in all the faults
      That genius has—­without the genius! 
    His prejudices (like those words
      That LINDLEY MURRAY terms “enelitic”)
    Cling close, and grow a part of him. 
      To form the oyster-supper critic.

    The manager’s his bosom-friend;
      The agents love him like a brother. 
    His golden rule’s to treat himself
      As he’d be treated by another. 
    Though, in a business way, he sells
      Impartial puffs for filthy lucre,
    There’s not, at the dramatic cards,
      A rival whom, he cannot euchre.

    He makes translations from the French,
      Of “interest contemporaneous,”
    And ekes a modest salary out
      By bribes and bonuses extraneous. 
    He loves to “buzz” some British blonde
      Who from a prince received her “breedin’”
    And ever since has lived like EVE,
      Unclothed (but not ashamed) in Eden.

    Widows and orphanesses fair,
      Upon the stage, are all his go. 
    But, off, the widow he likes most
      Is mentioned as the Veuve CLICQUOT. 
    Like VATHEK lost in ERLIS’ hall,
      Upborne on shoulder-blades Afritic,
    He bears, within, a perjured heart,
      This sensual oyster-supper critic.

SPIFFKINS.

* * * * *

Two Men

JULES FAVRE is said to possess fair administrative abilities, but
GAMBETTA—­

* * * * *

[Illustration:  REDUCED TO EXTREMITIES.

IT IS WHISPERED BY JENKINS THAT A “PASSING BELLE” OF MADISON AVENUE HAS RESORTED TO A NOVEL EUROPEAN FASHION BY EXHIBITING A CAST OF HER—­WELL, “INFERIOR ANATOMY,” AS A DRAWING-ROOM ORNAMENT.]