two hundred pounds, and then, just at the moment when, with a darkling scowl and a gleaming eye, he steps forward to claim his affianced bride, Scollick, Mr. ALFRED HOLLES, hitherto only known as the drunken gardener, will throw off his disguise, and, to a burst of applause from an excited audience, will say, “I arrest you for murder and robbery! and—­I am HAWKSHAW the Detective!!!” or words to this effect.  In his impersonation of Mark Denzil Mr. STEPHENS seems to have attempted an imitation of the light and airy style of Mr. ARTHUR STIRLING.

[Illustration:  “The Shadow,” but more like the substance.  Collapse of Mr. Yorke Stephens into the arms of Miss Marrying Terry, on hearing the Shadow exclaim, “Yorke (Stephens), you’re wanted!”]

The end of the Second Act is, to my thinking, a mistake in dramatic art.  Everyone of the audience knows that the woman who has stolen the money is Mark Denzil’s wife, and nobody requires from Denzil himself oral confirmation of the fact, much less do they want an interval of several minutes,—­it may be only seconds, but it seems minutes,—­before the Curtain descends, occupied only by Mark Denzil imploring that his wife shall not be taken before the magistrate and be charged with theft.  This is an anti-climax, weakening an otherwise effective situation, as the immediate result of this scene could easily be given in a couple of sentences of dialogue at the commencement of the last Act.  It is this fault, far more than the unpruned passages of dialogue, that makes this interesting and well acted play seem too long—­at least, such is the honest opinion of A FRIEND IN FRONT.

* * * * *

THE BURDEN OF BACILLUS.

  Is there no one to protect us, is existence then a sin,
  That we’re worried here in London and in Paris and Berlin? 
  We would live at peace with all men, but “Destroy them!” is the cry,
  Physiological assassins are not happy till we die. 
  With the rights of man acknowledged, can you wonder that we squirm
  At the endless persecution of the much-maltreated germ.

  We are ta’en from home and hearthstone, from the newly-wedded bride,
  To be looked at by cold optics on a microscopic slide;
  We are boiled and stewed together, and they never think it hurts;
  We’re injected into rabbits by those hypodermic squirts: 
  Never safe, although so very insignificant in size,
  There’s no peace for poor Bacillus, so it seems, until he dies.

  It is strange to think how men lived in the days of long ago,
  When the fact of our existence they had never chanced to know. 
  If the scientific ghouls are right who hunt us to the death,
  Those who came before them surely had expired ere they drew breath: 
  We were there in those old ages, thriving in our youthful bloom;
  Then there was no KOCH or PASTEUR bent on compassing our doom.