But the manager was a shrewd fellow.  He found out what was wanting, and resolved to remedy it.  So, the next morning’s posters announced that on that evening Mr. Eglantine Mowbray would perform, at the conclusion, his terrific and unparalleled feat of rolling down the hill!

And he did.  At the last moment, the Inebriate appeared, bottle in hand, agonizing and howling on the summit of a high rock, from which a slope, at an angle of forty-five degrees, went down to a mysterious craggy pit, thickly grown around with briers and shrubs, all bearing spiky thorns of the most fish-hooky and ten-penny nail description imaginable.  The flat or back-scene, suddenly lighted up from behind, presented, as a transparency, that terrible collection of devils which you may have witnessed in a popular engraving entitled, ‘Delirium Tremens.’  The Inebriate, taking one parting drink, staggered—­fell—­rolled over and over down the hill into the abyss, from which flames burst forth, red, green, and blue, and the audience were wild with delight.  Three times was Eglantine Mowbray compelled, by the rapturous encores, to roll down that hill into the fiery pit.  No wonder that, at the last trial, there rose from the abyss a wild cry of ‘I’ll be blessed if I do it again.’

    MORAL.—­When in country villages, don’t talk about role-ing,
    unless you mean to do it!

* * * * *

Since the gilet de matin has superseded the robe de chambre, or dressing-gown, it is marvelous to see with what wrath the fast men, club-men, and other highly civilized forms of humanity, pursue the ancient garment.  One of the most vigorous assaults on the gabardine in question, comes to us as

    A FLING AT DRESSING-GOWNS.

My name is Albert Fling.  I am an active, business, married man, that is, wedded to Mrs. Fling, and married to business.  I had the misfortune, some time since, to break a leg; and before it was mended Madame Fling, hoping to soothe my hours of convalescence, caused to be made for me a dressing-gown, which, on due reflection, I believe was modeled after the latest style of strait-jacket.  This belief is confirmed by the fact that when I put it on, I am at once confined to the house, ‘get mad,’ and am soberly convinced that if any of my friends were to see me walking in the street, clad in this apparel, they would instantly entertain ideas of my insanity.

In the hours of torture endured while wearing it, I have appealed to my dear wife to truly tell me where she first conceived the thought that there was a grain of comfort to be found in bearing it on my back?  She has candidly answered that she first read about it in divers English novels and sundry American novels, the latter invariably a rehash of the first.  In both of these varieties of the same species of books, the hero is represented