QUEER QUERIES.

HEALTH.—­I am not an invalid, but I suffer from giddiness, a feeling of suffocation, with excruciating pains, and apparent cessation of the heart’s action.  I am also so nervous, that, whenever the door is opened, I begin to scream loudly.  My mental feebleness finds vent in puns that have alienated my oldest friends.  Could some Correspondent explain these symptoms?  I do not believe in Doctors, but am taking “Soft-sawder’s Emulgent Balsam of Aconitine.”  It does not seem to have done me much good yet, but that is probably due to my not having tried it long enough.—­RATHER ANXIOUS.

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A DANCING-ON-NOTHING GIRL.—­Talk of The Dancing Girl at the Haymarket—­of course people will talk—­why she’s nothing to the girls who dance to M. JACOBI’s inimitable ballet-music at the Alhambra.  Here they have a magic show, which “puzzles the Quaker;” and I don’t mind admitting that I was the quaker when I saw a fair and comely young lady up in the air standing still and dancing on nothing at all!  Certainly “Aerolithe” is as good as any of her marvellous predecessors, the Vanishing Girl included.  As a conjuror, Mr. CARL HERTZ, who I take to be the inventor of the above illusion, is also uncommonly neat, and this “Ten o’Clock,” to all lovers of the marvellous, can be recommended by

THE FACULTY FOR AMUSEMENT.

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[Illustration:  RANDOM ALADDIN.

HIS ADVENTURES IN MASHONALAND.  AN ARABIAN NIGHT’S DREAM.  SNOOZE NO. 1.]

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“OH, NO, WE NEVER MENTION HIM!”

[HER MAJESTY in the evening witnessed the performance of The Gondoliers, a Comic Opera, composed by Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN, in the Waterloo Chamber, by the Savoy Theatre Company, under the management of MR. R. D’OYLY CARTE.—­From the Times Court Circular, Monday, March 9.]

“A comic Opera, composed by Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN.”  Quite so.  But where does W.S.  GILBERT come in?  Let us see.  After giving the programme, and after giving all the characters and the supers, the words “Dramatis Personae” occur as an after-thought, and underneath are the names of the Musical Director, Stage Manager, Wig Provider, &c., &c.  Well, “W.S.G.” doesn’t come in here.  After the highly successful performance, R. D’OYLY CARTE, says the Times C.C., “had the honour of being presented to HER MAJESTY, who expressed her warm appreciation of the manner in which the performance was conducted.”  Did R. D’OYLY think of mentioning that “the words” were by W.S.G.?  And then it is told how D’OYLY refused to take any payment for the performance.  Noble, generous-hearted, large-minded, and liberal D’OYLY!  Sir ARTHUR COURTLY SULLIVAN’s name was to the Bill, and so his consent to this extra act of generosity may be taken for granted.  But what said Sir BRIAN DE BOIS GILBERT?  By the merry-maskins, but an he be not pleased, dub me knight Samingo!  Will D’OYLY be dubbed Knight?  And what sort of a Knight?  Well, remembering a certain amusing little episode in the more recent history of the Savoy Theatre, why not a “Carpet Knight”?