Bad Manners ... Theatres

Graee Green. disgusted with Ensliih theatres, and as often as she bas entered one of those dark and airless pens in London she bas heen prond of our own more democratie places of entertainment: "Wlien I see bow quick the average Englishman is to feel, and how fierce to resent all discomforts and impoaitions when he is abroad - the champion grumbler of the traveling world - I wonder how he endures this state of things at home. Evening dress is remorelessly exacted at the theatre ns at the opera. If a lady appearsin a bonnet, eversosmall, the usher requests her, with smaller courtesy, to take it off. If they would alao bar out some of the huge English headdresses, so fearfully and wonderfully made, of lace, flowers and feathers - nightmares of millinery- it were welL Hats and bonnets, if ever so dainty, certainly obstruct the visión of nnfortunates in the rear, and as forthenewVandyke and Gainaborough chapeaux, ladies might as well carry spread parasols into the theatre or concert hall as wear thetn. In our country we shall fight on this head-gear queatiou. Let us be thorough. Let the cry be: 'Off with bonnets and hats ! Top-kuots come down !' On the night of Salvini's last appearance as Othello my situation was made tlie more intolerable by an unconscious woman, directly in front of me, wearing a most stnpendous structure in the sbape of an English hat, perched on a towering cbignon, the fashion of which, among Elnglish dames bas mostly gone out, and with us, happily, never carne in. It hid the highest tragedy. All I saw was by cronching and twisting and artiul dodging. So it was that even the blood-curdling self-murder that flnished all carne as a blessed relief. "