were never seen before as we, standing around the ugly old thing Finally, Alice suggested:

"Open it!'

"Oh, I know what it is,' I said; it is my old Thibet, that mother has had made over for me.'

"Let's see,' persisted Alice.

"So I opened the package. The first thing I drew out was too much for me.

"What a funny-looking basque!' exclaimed Alice. All the rest were struck dumb with disappointment.

"No! not a basque at all, but a man's black satin waistcoat! and next came objects about which there could be no doubt—a pair of dingy old trousers, and a swallow-tailed coat! Imagine the chorus of damsels!

"The secret was, that two packages lay in father's office—one for me, the other for those everlasting freedmen. John was to forward mine. He had taken up the box to write my address on it, when the yellow bundle tumbled off the desk at his feet and scared the wits out of his head. So I came in for father's secondhand clothes, and the Ethiopians had the goodies"!"

Repentant Dominie loq.-"I don't approve of it at all; but then, if you must write the wicked thing, I heard a good story for you to day. Dr. found himself in the pulpit of a Dutch Reformed Church the other Sunday. You know he is one who prides himself on his adaptation to places and times. Just at the close of the introductory service, a black gown lying over the arm of the sofa caught his eye. He was rising to deliver his sermon, when it forced itself on his attention again.

666 'Sure enough,' thought he, Dutch Reformed clergymen do wear gowns. I might as well put it on.'

"So he solemnly thrust himself into the malicious (as you would say) garment, and went through the services as well as he could, considering that his audience seemed singularly agitated, and indeed on the point of bursting out into a general laugh, throughout the entire service. And no wonder! The good Doctor, in his zeal for conformity, had attired himself in the black cambric duster in which the pulpit was shrouded during week-days, and had been gesticulating his eloquent homily with his arms thrust through the holes left for the pulpit-lamps!"

OON CRITEEK DE BERNHARDT.

BY EUGENE FIELD.

THE reappearance of Sara Bernhardt in the midst of us has, of course, set our best society circles into a flutter of excitement; and we have been highly edified by the various criticisms which we have heard passed upon that gifted woman's performance of "Fedora" night before last. All these criticisms have flavored of that directness, that frankness, and that rugged discrimination which are so characteristic of true Western culture. Col. J. M. Hill, the esteemed lessee of the Columbia Theatre, told us some weeks ago that his object in securing a season of Bernhardt was to give a series of entertainments which would appeal for appreciation and for patronage to the intellectuality of our crême de la crême, and which would be several degrees above the comprehension of the hoi polloi. We noticed last Monday evening that the hoi polloi were not on hand to welcome the French artiste; and we were ineffably pained to notice, too, that the crême de la crême was very meagrely represented. This amazed as well as pained us: if Sara Bernhardt cannot pack the Columbia at Col. Hill's popular prices, who, by the memory of Racine and Molière ! who -we ask in all solemnity-who can? And what amazed us, furthermore perhaps we should say what shocked us-was the exceeding frigidity with which the select few of our crême de la crême received the superb bits of art which Sara Bernhardt threw out, much as an emery wheel emits beauteous vari-colored sparks. "Zis eez awful!" exclaimed Sara to her stage-manager, as she came off the stage after the first act of "Fedora." "Ze play eez in Russia, but ze audiongce eez in ze circle polaire !"

It strikes us that Sara was pretty nearly correct: but for the date on the play-bill, we might have surmised that our French friends were performing amid the surroundings of the glacial period.

66

"Ze play eez Fedora,'" said Sara to M. le Général Carson, entre acte, ze artiste eez Bernhardt, and ze audiongce eez' Les Miserables!'

M. le Général came right out and told this to distinguished

friends in the lobby. He said it was a bong mo; but young Horace McVicker, who once conducted a Paris-green manufac tory in California, and therefore is an accomplished French scholar, corrected M. le Général by alleging that Sara's witticism was not a bong mo, but a judy spree.

great

deal after he had once located her. In order to make sure of doing the proper thing, he applauded every woman that appeared on the stage; and by the time the second act was fairly under way, he was able to identify the "cantatreese" (as he called her) by the color of her hair. "But," he remarked to his friend. M. le Colonnel Potter Palmer, later in the evening, "I don't mind

telling you that I don't like her as well as I do Patti; and as for this man, Sardoo ".

"Sardoo? Who's he?" interrupted M. le Colonnel Palmer.

"Why, he's the man who wrote this piece!" said the Markeesy; "and he doesn't hold a candle to our Italian poets, Danty and Bockashyo."

"I don't know anything about such things," said M. le Colonnel Palmer, meekly. "As for myself, I like to be amused when I go to a show; and I presume I'd like this woman very much if I could see her in one of the fine old English comedies, such as the Bunch of Keys,' or the 'Rag Baby.""

Now, while these two distinguished personages were aware that the play was "Fedora," there were many in the auditorium who had not very clear convictions on this point. M. Thomas J. Hooper, the prominent linseed-oil manufacturer (whose palatial residence on Prairie Avenue is the Mecca of our most cultured society)-M. Hooper, we say, sat through three acts without dreaming that the play was "Fedora."

"I like Clara Morris better in this role," said he to M. T. Desplaines Wiggins, one of the vice-presidents of the Chicago Literary Club.

"But, my dear fellow," said M. Wiggins, in a tone of expostulation, "Clara Morris never played that part!"

"Never played Cameel?" cried M. Hooper. "Why, bless you, man, I seen her do it right here in this theatre !"

"But this isn't Cameel,'" said M. Wiggins, "it's Feedorer."" "Well, now, I'll bet you fifty it's 'Cameel,'" said M. Hooper, calmly but firmly.

M. Wiggins covered the wager, and M. Billy Lyon decided in favor of Wiggins and "Fedora."

"I knew I was right," exclaimed M. Wiggins, triumphantly, "for I saw it on the programme."

M. Hooper was very much put out. "You don't pronounce that word right, anyway," he muttered, sulkily.

"What word ?" demanded M. Wiggins, hotly.

"That word programmay," said M. Hooper. "It's French; and it isn't program, but programmay."

They wagered fifty dollars on it between them, and referred it to M. Jean McConnell.

"At popular prices it's program," said M. McConnell; "but during this engagement it's programmay, sure.”

So M. Hooper squared himself financially; and M. Wiggins went down to his seat in the parquettay, muttering something that sounded very like a profane and inexcusable rhyme for program.

But, as we have hinted above, M. Hooper was not the only one in the audience who was unsettled as to what the play was, and what it was all about. Throughout the auditorium, messieurs, mesdames and mademoiselles were sadly bothered to know whether it was "Cameel" or "Faydorah" or "Tayodorah " or " Fru-Fru" or some other morso from the Bernhardt repertevoi. M. James M. Billings, the prominent restaurateur, told his family that the bill had been changed, and that the piece was "Jennie Saper." 'Why, no, 'tain't, pa," protested Mdlle. Billings, "it's Faydorah.'

"Now, look here, Birdie," said M. Billings, sternly, "I know what I'm talking about. As we were comin' in, I asked one of the men in the entry what the piece was, and he said, 'Jennie Saper;' and he knew, for he was a Frenchman."

"Our seats," said M. T. Frelinghuysen Boothby, "were so far back that we had difficulty in making out what Burnhart said; but from what I did hear, I would judge that she spoke better English than Rhea-at any rate, I could understand her better than I ever could Rhea."

M. le Colonnel Fitzgerald confessed to being disappointed. "It may be my fault, however," said he, "for I am very rusty in my French, having paid no attention to it since I visited Montreal in the summer of 1880. I brought my French Conversations' along with me to-night, but it was of no assistance to me. I hadn't got half through the first scene in the first act when Fedora was dying in the last act. This was slow business. Of course there were a good many words and phrases that were familiar, such as voyla,' 'toot sweet,' tray be-yen,' 'mercee,' 'pardong,' 'bong zhour,' and 'wee wee,' You can depend upon it, that whenever I heard these old friends, I applauded with the nicest and the heartiest discrimination."

Now, all these criticisms and features (and there were many, many more such) interested us-or, at least, they entertained us. But we were grieved to discover a disposition (shall we say a pongshong?) on the part of the audience, to compare Bernhardt's Fedora with Fanny Davenport's. To institute any such compari