From London wafts the rumor that Alexandra, pleading a dread of copy-designing peeresses, guards with jealous vigilance the secret of her coronation crown, and gossip adds that she fears to have it duplicated by some enterprising American.  It is doubtful if the peculiar humor of the British populace would allow of a full appreciation of this joke.  Years and etiquette combined have led her Majesty to the thraldom of the rouge and enamel pot.  Like the sensible woman that she is she attempts no concealment of the fact that she protects herself from becoming hideous by the employment of three maids whose duty it is to successively undertake the embellishment of the royal countenance.  By means of this relief no one of these women loses her delicacy of eye and touch, and Alexandra blooms with the rosy softness of a girl.

* * * * *

The papers seem to be woefully wrought up over the financial rating of Mr. Harry Lehr.  Whether he is or whether he is not a wine boomer would not ordinarily be a query of agitating importance.  Nor yet is the exact proportion of his yearly salary of national interest.  No one ever accused this agile gentleman of setting up for a millionaire while his ingenuousness touching his wife’s property is disconcerting in its frankness.

* * * * *

Now that Tom Reed is settled in New York one wonders somewhat that one hears so little of his family.  They are to be congratulated on their breeding, for with his prominence to back them they would find notoriety an easy plum.  A gentleman called at Mr. Reed’s office a day or two ago to ask for an autograph letter on the plea that he had in his possession one of each of the speakers, and wound up his request with the half joking query of “You are a great man, are you not, Mr. Reed?” “No,” said the rotund Tom in his big-voiced drawl, “No, but I am a good man.”

BettyStair.

=The Play=

If it be true that the future is revealed in the past, then should there be something in the dramatic season which is dead to indicate the character of the season not yet born.  By the straws of public approval is the course of the dramatic current determined by those master mariners of the stage, the managers of theatres.  The late season has left no great store of such buoys to mark the fair channel to success.  Of such as there are, the purport is not altogether convincing.

To record that “Du Barry” and “Beauty and the Beast” are notable successes is but to record that the public, as ever, is attracted by display of rich vestments and spectacular effect.  Such straws indicate nothing more than that a Circus or a Wild West Show will seduce to Madison Square Garden an audience that would fill a theatre for a month.

Mr. Hawtrey’s triumph at the Garrick Theatre is as little of a guide to popular opinion as was Anna Held’s or Weber and Fields’.  No manager in his senses would suggest that because Mr. Hawtrey succeeded with “A Message from Mars,” the public are prepared to support a series of like Christmas ghost stories.  It was the novelty that took, and the personality of a refreshingly non-American actor.