I am, dear Mr. Punch,

Yours faithfully,

NOSTRI TEMPORIS LAUDATOR.

* * * * *

CULTURE IN THE STY.

    “Yorkshire Pork Pies, possessing character and individuality, 5 lb. 
    Price, 15s.—­Daily Express.

* * * * *

    “COLUMBUS OF THE AIR.

    Captain Alcock’s Story of his Great Atlantic Flight.”—­Dublin
    Evening Telegraph.

Would not Vimy-bus be better?

* * * * *

Slough Verdict:  Dulce est de-Cippenham in loco.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“THE CINDERELLA MAN.”

The importation of theatrical sweet-stuff from America is of course a growing industry.  The latest consignment, The Cinderella Man, first arrived in this country in the form of a novel, and the difficulty it offered was that the struggling hero, Anthony Quintard, whose fate depended, in the absence of common-sense, on his winning a ten thousand dollar prize for an opera libretto, seemed to me, from samples of his work exhibited, to be an unlikely competitor.  But I must say that when at the play I saw our Mr. NARES in his garret sucking at his pipe in that masterful manner and modifying what might so easily have been a too sticky situation with a charmingly light touch, I began to think better of Anthony’s chances and therefore necessarily of Mr. EDWARD CHILDS CARPENTER’S general idea.  For the author obviously may claim the credit of this reading, even if I harbour an obstinate private suspicion that it was only by a very deliberate and steadfast determination on the part of Mr. NARES as hero and Mr. HOLMAN CLARK as matchmaker that this particular reading prevailed.

Mr. CARPENTER doesn’t believe in mystifications.  He explains everything with the completest candour in his first Act, from which you gather that a millionaire’s daughter, returning from Paris to the immense stuffy New York mansion, is desperately lonely, and has also cut herself free from an unsatisfactory affair of the heart; that a young poet, a friend of the millionaire’s sentimental lawyer, is also lonely, living like Cinderella (isn’t this wrong?) in an attic next-door, proud as poor; that another friend of the millionaire has offered a prize for a libretto.  Having thus put the rabbit, the bird-cage and the flowerpot into the hat in front of you he proceeds in a leisurely manner to take them out again.

The young millionairess, posing as a poor “companion,” visits the starveling poet via the snow-covered roof and the attic window, bringing food, stoves, coverlets, wool to mend his socks and ideas to mend his opera.  Naturally here were opportunities of unlimited business, during which Marjorie (Miss RENEE KELLY) looked perfectly sweet, as I heard more than one ardent young lady declare to approving lieutenants.