* * * * *

REALLY ENTERTAINING.

Capital entertainment the GERMAN REEDS have just now.  Mr. ALFRED REED immensely funny in Carnival Time, written by MALCOLM WATSON and CORNY GRAIN.  You should have heard Miss NELLIE FARREN’S hearty laughter at the drolleries in St. George’s Hall last Thursday afternoon.  NELLY FARREN’S as good an audience as she is a comic actress, and that’s saying a good deal.  Miss FANNY HOLLAND and Miss KATE TULLY excellent.  Then, after the Carnival, CORNY GRAIN’S Society Peepshow for 1890 sent everybody into fits.  That austere Indian Judge, Mr. Justice STRAIGHT, was straight no longer, but bent double by convulsions of laughter.  Mr. CORNY GRAIN deals out pleasantly some hard bits all round, but as everyone applies them to his or her neighbour, everyone naturally enjoys the joke immensely.  We used the word “drolleries” just now.  Happy Thought; As we have had the Fisheries, and the Sogeries, and any number of other “eries,” why not re-name St. George’s Hall “The Drolleries?” Advice gratis:—­Before the Season’s over, it is a place to spend a happy afternoon or evening.  As Hamlet, if he had thought of it, would have said to Ophelia, “Go! to the Drolleries!  Go!”

* * * * *

A DIALOGUE UP TO DATE.

(WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF TALKING AN INFINITE DEAL OF NOTHING.)

SCENE—­A Room, PERSONS—­GILNEST and ERBERT.

    [For further details, See Mr. OSCAR WILDE’S Article in The
    Nineteenth Century for July.]

Erbert (at the banjo).  My dear GILLIE, what are you doing?

Gilnest (yawning).  I was wondering when you were going to begin.  We have been sitting here for an hour, and nothing has been said upon the important subject we proposed to discuss.

E. (tapping him lightly on the cheek).  Tut, tut, my dear boy, you must not be petulant.  And yet, when I come to study you more closely, your face looks charming when you make a moue.  Let me see you do it again.  Ah, yes.  You look into my eyes with the divine sullenness that broods tragically upon the pale brow of the Antinous.  And through your mind, though you know it not (how indeed should you?), march many mystical phantoms that are not of this base world.  Pale HELEN steps out upon the battlements and turns to FLAUBERT her appealing glance, and CELLINI paces with Madame DE SEVIGNE through the eternal shadows of unrevealed realism.  And BROWNING, and HOMER, and MEREDITH, and OSCAR WILDE are with them, the fleet-footed giants of perennial youth, like unto the white-limbed Hermes, whom Polyxena once saw, and straight she hied her away to the vine-clad banks of Ilyssus, where Mr. PATER stands contemplative, like some mad scarlet thing by DVORAK, and together they march with the perfect significance of silence through realms that are cloud-capped with the bright darkness that shines from the poet’s throne amid the stars.