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The price of yearly subscription to THE THEATRE is three dollars in advance. We cannot undertake to return manuscript that is not suitable, unless we receive sufficient postage to do so. Care is always taken not needlessly to destroy valuable manuscript.

The Editor solicits contributions from the readers of THE THEATRE, and suggests that old play bills, and scraps relating to the stage, notes, news and items appertaining to the different arts, would be acceptable. It is the desire of the Editor to establish a widely-circulated magazine, and to further that end every good idea will be acted upon so far as possible.

All articles appearing in THE THEATRE are written especially for it unless credited otherwise.

Advertising rates of THE THEATRE will be furnished on application. Address all letters on this subject to GEORGE W. HARLAN, Manager Advertising Department.

DRIFT.

IT is now definitely announced that Mrs. James Brown Potter will make her first appearance as a professional actress at the Haymarket Theatre on the evening of March 29. She is being assiduously coached by Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, and is hard at work on the rehearsals of Wilkie Collins's play of "Man and Wife." She will take the part of Anne Sylvester, a governess, which has been made familiar to people in this country by the excellent performances of Mrs. D. P. Bowers. The opposite male part is Geoffrey Delamayne, which was played in London with great success in 1873 by Mr. Bancroft. Undoubtedly the revival of this piece will stir up a large sale for the book.

MR. DION BOUCICAULT recently said, in speaking of Boston, that "the city affords only transient lodgings to passing shows. The theatre, which might and should exercise a refining influence and afford a source of intellectual and pure entertainment, where the minds of young and old might be refreshed, has become a variety' store of all sorts, and frequently of a very impure sort. There is a want, a family want, for a modest family theatre, not larger than Daly's in New York or the Gymnasium in Paris or the Prince of Wales in London, where a stock company of selected comedians may grow into favor under the eyes of the community, where families could always attend

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with the full assurance that the entertainment would be found unobjectionable in every way, and where a fair opening might be afforded to American dramatists to show our native products without excluding the best of foreign products, making no pretence to purism." It would seem as if this would suggest a good opportunity to an intellectual theatre manager. Boston is considered an excellent theatrical centre, and the residents are more steady patrons of the theatre than the people of New York. It is the floating population here which fills the playhouses.

MR. BOUCICAULT'S play, "The Jilt," was produced at the Brooklyn Park Theatre last Monday. Miss Thorndike was too ill to appear in the part of Kitty Woodstock, and Miss Georgia Cayvan assumed it at a few hours' notice, playing it with much success, and displaying rather a remarkable feat in memorizing.

IT is disclosed that the novel from which Mr. Wertheimer took the play of “Walda Lamar'' is "Monsieur de St. Bertrand," by Ernest Feydeau, a French romancist.

I WAS Sorry to hear of the death of young Lytton Sothern. It seems but yesterday that I saw him in full youth and vigor, with the ambition to follow in his father's footsteps. It was at a little dinner given in the old Bloomer Hotel, a once famous hostelry in Buffalo. The great Dundreary sat at one end of the table, merry with anecdote and brilliant in his conversation. Lytton Sothern sat at the opposite end, and at his left the comedian, Vining Bowers. There was also at the table Joseph Warren, the then well-known proprietor of the Buffalo Courier. They are all dead.

THE most thoughtful pulpit utterance which has been made regarding Henry Ward Beecher was delivered in Buffalo, March 13th, by the Rev. S. R. Fuller, the rector of St. John's Episcopal Church, of that city. THE THEATRE has had occasion once before to speak of Mr. Fuller, and after reading his discourse as published in the Buffalo Express, I am inclined to think that he is about as far ahead of the people in his intellectuality as he insists Henry Ward Beecher was-thirty-three years.

I HAVE received the following letter from Chicago:

DEAR TROPHONIUS:-You call timely attention in THE THEATRE of March 7 to kissing as at present indulged in on the stage. Never having seen Mr. Nat. Goodwin and Miss Grubb in the "Skating Rink" I am not familiar with the extent of their particular offense. But if it is even half as vulgar as the manoeuvres of some of the "Madison Square Emotional Clinging Lovers" it is certainly time to cry halt. Nor are the male participants in this lecherous osculation the most offensive. Some of the latter-day emotional ingenues cling with body, arms and lips to their stage lovers with a tenacity that is positively an insult to decencythat it made" Yours Truly" blush clear down beneath his shirt-collar for every "ingenue" under twenty-five in the entire auditorium. Such vulgarity may do for the boudoir of the demi-monde, but every stage manager with the merest approach to a sense of propriety should forbid it on his stage. There was a time when a well-executed feigned kiss between stage lovers in the most affectionate situation would satisfy the most exacting, audience. But that was before the days of real "realism.'

While upon the subject of "stage offenses," permit me to allude, as delicately as I can, to another almost revolting form of indecency in stage costumes in the "Adonis" burlesques of to-day. If a thing in the form of a man had dared to appear ten years ago before an audience in the costume in which Adonis appears in one scene without the drapery of some sort of military sash the police would have taken the "model artist" in hand. But I suppose your contributor, Raphael Benoni, would call these strictures of mine "falling back on the hackneyed excuse of neglected genius-degenerate age or depraved public taste." He possibly considers a play which succeeds notwithstanding a con"Adonis " census of opinion, among the knowing ones, without right or title," whatever this "Raphaelite" outburst may mean. Ah, well! Benoni says that to insist that the stage proper may be made an educator of the people makes him laugh"because it is rot." Selah, says yours,

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Otto Peltzer.

THE Tribune's London correspondent writes that "Messrs. Macmillan are now to be added

to the short list of publishers who have followed Messrs. Longmans' lead in promising to exhibit vouchers with authors' accounts. They, like Mr. Murray, protest that they have ever been willing, when asked, to fulfil this obligation, which they say the law exacts. It may be doubted whether the law exacts it, except indirectly. The author's remedy hitherto has been an application to the Court of Chancery, which would order an inspection of the disputed accounts; but few authors cared to push matters so far. What English publishers resent and resist, is being called on to do business with authors on business principles."

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IT seems to me that popular authors might find it to great advantage to enter into a partnership for the publishing of their own books. It is not so expensive a task as one might imagine. A pamphlet volume of say 224 pages, selling for fifty cents, could be published and thoroughly circulated at an expense not exceeding $500 for the first edition of 3,000 copies, including the electrotype plates. The second edition is only the expense of paper and printing, the plates saving the necessity of further composition. The various ramifications of the different news companies are now

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It is announced that two Boston journalists, W. H. Hills and R. Luce, will publish a monthly magazine, to be entitled "The Writer," and state that it will aim to be helpful, interesting and instructive to all literary workers ; to give plain and practical hints, helps and suggestions about preparing and editing manuscript; to collect and publish the experiences. experiments and observations of literary people for the benefit of all writers; and to note improved methods and labor-saving devices for literary workers.

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A LONDON paper says that the English people are the greatest whistlers in the world, and it has no doubt that the orbicular and

buccinatory muscles would be found to be of superior strength when compared with those of other nations. The notes that a whistler can compass are about as many as there are in the human voice, "and," this writer says further, "I notice that all whistlers, whether men or women, are of the treble kind; for, although some may be able to whistle a little lower than others so as to answer to the alto, yet none go so low as to correspond with the tenor or bass. As for the quality of the whistling, there is little doubt that a fine whistler is born and not made; for the natural gifts of a good ear, a sound pair of lungs, a favorable formation of the cavity of the mouth and a flexibility and agility in the muscles that control the necessary motions are so far requisite that no art can supply the want of them." There is a Mrs. Shaw here in New York that has made a distinguished success this season by whistling at private and public entertainments. But the most remarkable whistler I ever listened to was a lady prominent in Buffalo society years ago, but now dead. She would occasionally whistle before an informal gathering, and her bird-like trills and flute-like quality always created a surprise that the human mouth was capable of such exquisite

music.

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