in life than the Hippodrome.  It had a state, a dignity, a smoothness, a polish, which I should not know where to match, and when the superb coach drove into the ring to convey the lady performers to the scene of their events, there was a majesty in the effect which I doubt if courts have the power to rival.  Still, it should be remembered that I have never been at court, and speak from a knowledge of the Hippodrome only.

AT A DIME MUSEUM

“I see,” said my friend, “that you have been writing a good deal about the theatre during the past winter.  You have been attacking its high hats and its high prices, and its low morals; and I suppose that you think you have done good, as people call it.”

I.

This seemed like a challenge of some sort, and I prepared myself to take it up warily.  I said I should be very sorry to do good, as people called it; because such a line of action nearly always ended in spiritual pride for the doer and general demoralization for the doee.  Still, I said, a law had lately been passed in Ohio giving a man who found himself behind a high hat at the theatre a claim for damages against the manager; and if the passage of this law could be traced ever so faintly and indirectly to my teachings, I should not altogether grieve for the good I had done.  I added that if all the States should pass such a law, and other laws fixing a low price for a certain number of seats at the theatres, or obliging the managers to give one free performance every month, as the law does in Paris, and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays—­

“I see what you mean,” said my friend, a little impatiently.  “You mean sumptuary legislation.  But I have not come to talk to you upon that subject, for then you would probably want to do all the talking yourself.  I want to ask you if you have visited any of the cheaper amusements of this metropolis, or know anything of the really clever and charming things one may see there for a very little money.”

“Ten cents, for instance?”

“Yes.”

I answered that I would never own to having come as low down as that; and I expressed a hardy and somewhat inconsistent doubt of the quality of the amusement that could be had for that money.  I questioned if anything intellectual could be had for it.

“What do you say to the ten-cent magazines?” my friend retorted.  “And do you pretend that the two-dollar drama is intellectual?”

I had to confess that it generally was not, and that this was part of my grief with it.