Games/Humor Books

STRAY THOUGHTS ON PLAY-WRITING. From the Common-place Book of The O'Wilde.—The play? Oh, the play be zephyr'd! The play is not the thing. In other words, the play is nothing. Point is to prepare immense assortment of entirely irrelevant epigrams. "Epigram, my dear Duke, is the refuge of the dullard, who imagines that he obtains truth by inverting a truism." That sounds well; must... more...

LETTERS TO PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW. (No answers required, thank you.) To Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, Head of the German Peace Delegation. The enthralling volume, entitled Preliminary Terms of Peace, on which your attention is being engrossed at the present moment, is said to be of the same length as A Tale of Two Cities. In other respects there is little resemblance traceable between the two works. A... more...

ROBERT'S AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCE. My akwaintance among eminent selebraties seems to be rapidly encreasing. Within what Amlet calls a week, a little week, after my larst intervue with the emenent young Swell as amost lost his art to the pretty Bridesmade, I have been onored with the most cordial notice of a werry emenent Amerrycane, who cums to Lundon wunce ewery year, and makes a good long stay, and... more...

BLANCHE'S LETTERS. SOCIETY "WAR-WORKERS." DEAREST DAPHNE,—The scarcity of paper isn't altogether an unmixed misfortune, as far as one's correspondence is concerned. Letters that don't matter, letters from the insignificant and the boresome, simply aren't answered. For small spur-of-the-moment notes to one's intimes who're not too far off, there's quite... more...

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS. BATHOS and pathos are closely allied in sound as well as in sense. Mr. FECHTER evidently regards them as completely identical; and in his acting, as in his pronunciation, uniformly prefers the former to the latter. He has recently exemplified this by his personation of CLAUDE MELNOTTE, in that most tawdry specimen of the cotton-velvet drama, the LADY OF LYONS. This melancholy event... more...

VOCES POPULI. MORE POT-POURRI FROM THE PARK. SCENE—The Park, near Cumberland Gate, on almost any fine afternoon. Behind the rails separating the turf from the paths, Orators, Preachers, and Reciters are holding forth, for the delectation of small groups, who are mostly engaged in discussing some totally different subject. A set debate, with a time-limit, and a purely ornamental Chairman, is in... more...

OPERATIC NOTES.Ancient Brass-Work, in memory of Wagner the Great Worker in Brass. Wednesday.—WAGNER. Vainly the Daughters of the River, representing the floating capital of the Banks of the Rhine, cry "Woa! Woa!" The orchestra, under the direction of Herr MAHLER, takes no notice of them, but goes on Wagnerianly, inexorably. Thus swimmingly we reach Walhall—where the fire-god Loge has a... more...

June 23, 1920 Kieff has been retaken by the Bolshevists. It looks as if the Poles will have to win the place three times in succession before it becomes their own property. Annoyed by a small boy who was sucking sweets and laughing a parson recently stopped in the middle of his sermon and refused to go on with it. We are informed that the boy in question has since received several tempting offers from... more...

"'TIS MERRY IN HALL.""Knock'd 'em!""What's in an 'at without an 'ed?" DISTAFFINA DE COCKAIGNE was wont to inquire, and "what's an 'all" (of Music like the London Pavilion) "without a NED" in the shape of Mr. EDWARD SWANBOROUGH, the all-knowing yet ever-green Acting Manager at this place of entertainment, who possessing the... more...

THE TIPTOES. A SKETCH. "The Wrongheads have been a considerable family ever since England was England." VANBRUGH. Morning and evening, from every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb... more...