Daily Mirror from London, London, England • 7

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Daily Mirror SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1907. A LOW-NECKED AGE. HIS," said a barrister engaged in the farce called The Pretty Actress and the Picture Postcard," which was performed this week with great success at the Theatre Royal, Law Courts, under the management of Mr. justice Darling, this is d6collete age." What (lid he mean by that enigmatic phrase? is 3 an epithet applied to evening dresses. and simply means "lownecked.

Now. dresses have been at various periods; cut far lower than they are to-day. The expre- on rrtft4 have been used in some figurative selTq''. tf th barris.ter meant thi- was an age which the art of suggestion" has been carefully cultivated in which the grosser rides of life. of being healthily recognised and rated as a common-place, are gloated over with a sniffing secretiveness which makes decent people rick --then he was unfortunately quite correct in his diagnosis.

One finds cyrt every side repulsive proofs of this despicable hankering alter the unclean. Most of the musical comedy theatres are ntinistering more or less to- the foul goddess Lubricity, and even the music -halls, which tfSed to kept free from scabrous suggestionti by the decent-mindedness of the middleclasis, are some of them pandering to the pornographic. it is. nonsense. for example, to say that -wOmen posing as appeal to the artistic.

instincts of popular They simp4 appeal to the same instinct as that ter which counsel referred when he called a low-necked age. Stiff. even exhibitions this are not so harmful a the meretricious atmosphere of plays which make vice appear attractive, and 7 oei nade those who know nothing of the world that glitter and garishne are the finest things in life. too, are getting as bad as theatrical speculators. Constantly they advertise "daring and outspoken stories in which the relations between men and women are discussed with great freedom," and so on.

Low-necked hooks are becoming more common even year. The picture-postcard craze has been made another agency for corruption. Many cards are openly indecent, and many more are only bought because they are on the nasty outskirts sniggering. impropriety. Still, there is no danger in any of these trap for those who know how mean and unsatisfying their baits really are.

If you don't know it yourself, take it from one who does. Happiness comes only to those who have realised that there are certain facts of life which decent people do not dwell upon. There is no truer saying than that to the pure all things are pure." But that does not mean that they need be continually talked about. In fact, the desire to talk about them and to dwell upon them is the sign of a mind which is anything hut pure. Don't give way tpf curiosity.

It is that which has led far more people into miry ways than any inherent depravity. or this.xuriosity grows by what it feeds on. It is never satisfied. It cannot be satisfied. Once give way to it, and you have unchained a greedy devil which will never leave you.

Don't let the scrofulous longing for the low-necked get any hold upon you. If you pick up a prurient book, put it down at once. If you see a prurient picture, don't gaze at it. Keep at arm's length the thoughts which blacken the mind. That is the only way.

H. H. F. A THOUGH T' FOR TO-DAY. no fen on earth can cheer like Englishmen, who do so rally one another's Mood and spirit when they cheer in earnest, that the stir is like the rush of their whole history, with all its standards waving at from Sallon THIS MORNING'S GOSSIP.

THE British Embassy will be the residence of the King and Queen during their short visit to Paris, which begins to-day. During other stays in the city he has always liked so much King Edward has almost invariably gone to a hotel, and generally to the Bristol--the quiet, discreet house in the aristocratic-looking Place Vendome. Only once in recent years was the King unfaithful to the Bristol, and that was when the gorgeous Ritz Hotel was opened in the same square. His Majesty spent a few days there, soon after it had been opened, six or seven years ago. One of the most interesting of the many weddings that arc expected before Lent, takes place this afternoon at Holy Trinity Church, Sloanestreet, where the Earl of Portarlington is to be married to Miss Winifreda Yuill.

Lord Portarlington is only in his twenty-fourth year. He was, for a time, in the Irish Guards, but has now retired when he was an actor and it is a commonplace that a few years on the stage are a good training for a dramatic author. Mr. Stephen Phillips is another celebrated English example of this point, and so, if Mr. Bernard Shaw will allow one to say so, is William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, however, and Mr. Stephen Phillips were successful as actors and both made hits, curiously enough, in the part of the ghost in Hamlet." But Mr. Pinero had no great triumphs as an actor. the new and quite excellent piece at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, he is funnier than ever. His sketch of a dear old duffer of a Dutchman is a joy from beginning to end.

No less amusing is Mr. George Barrett-L-an actor who has a delightful comic a Dutch Weary Willie. And then there is a girl comedian, Miss Gracie Leigh, who sings and dances and speaks her lines with delicious humour. There are good singers in the cast as well. Miss Isabel Jay's beautiful voice is heard most melodiously in several pretty songs, while the baritone and tenor, Mr.

Herbert Clayton and Mr. Walter Hyde are tuneful songsters also, and can act, too. Altogether "Miss Hook of Holland is the best thing Mr. Paul Rubens has done, and the prettiest, and merriest musical piece we have had for a long time. Next Friday evening, February 8, there will be a concert and a performance of The Arabian Nights by Mr.

Sydney Grundy, given at the Great Queen-street Theatre, by Mrs. Edward Sondheim, in aid of the Jamaica Earthquake Fund. The whole proceeds will be handed to the Daily and will then be cabled to Kingston. A great many well-known singers and actors have promised to appear, and the whole performance, even if it had not been arranged for a charitable purpose, would be worthy of the widest THROUGH THE MIRROR," BRAINS AND We young men of the world know what is goof! for ourselves much better than H. H.

does. We cultivate what the American Whitman so happily called the divine average." We carefully constrain our braininess within clue bounds, do this because of our love of social harmony. A man with brains is an intolerable nuisance ta decent people with well-regulated minds. He is enough to mar any symposium. He breaks in with his brilliant ideas, and makes a jarring discord in the symphonies of small talk.

Or, if he doesn't he does worse; he persistently writes to a and gives the editor the bother of blue-pencilling his best passages. And in business it is much the same the brainy man is everlastingly on the itch to disturb the routine of his office with some new method of keep. ing accounts, or some new subtlety for the be. wilderment of clients. J.

BlZo A.PBENT MARSITALT 33, Fulturo. OUR GOLD The only remedy the bankers have suggested ti increase our reserves is to- raise the Bank rate issue otil notes. We used to say that Great Britain had a gold currency and other countries only a silver and paper currency. Now, under the supposed blessings of free trade, we have a silver and paper currency (namely, cheques and postal orders), and it is the other countries that hold the bulk of the gold. Our gold in circulation has been getting less during the last thirty years, and, if this continues, in a few more rears we shall only have a paper currency, EMANUEL LEVY Oakwood-court, Kensington, W.

-X- He played minor parts for years in the provinces, and touring in the provinces in small parts some thirty years ago, by no means a light and rosy occupation. Mr. Pinero acted, too, in London, particularly with the late Sir Henry Irving. I remember hearing an amusing story about an incident that occurred while he was acting with Irving in Louis XI." Mr. Pinero became aware, in the middle of one scene, that a stage tree of considerable size was swaying and rocking about in a threatening manner just behind Irving.

Evi. MR. JUGGINS OF LONDON CHAPTER 11. The Wastrel members of the London County Council take him out shopping with the money we saw him yesterday drawing from the bank. They invest largely in all kinds of pretty trifles, like steamboats and tramcars, but he begins to realise that nothing they buy is of any use to him and that they leave his poc- kets empty.

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pc I ttp sa De from the service. It may be remembered that he was one of the King's rages at the Coronation. He owns a great deal of land in Queen's where his seat is called Emo Park. A great deal of sympathy will be felt for the Earl of Strafford in the loss of his daughter, Lady Dorothy Cuthbert, whose tragically sudden death we announced yesterday. Lady Dorothy was one of a large family, for Lard Strafford has three other daughters and three sons.

The present Lady Strafford, a daughter of Admiral Lord Frederic Kerr, is his second wife. For a good many years before he succeeded his brother, the late Earl, Lord Strafford was Vicar of St. Peter's, Cranley-gardens. It was an unhappy chance that the anniversary and 400th performance of Mr. Pinero's His House in Order at the St.

Theatre last night coincided with the illness of the author. This has been one of the most popular of all Mr. Pinero's only next in success to Sweet Lavender and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." It shows a mastery of the technical side of play-writing, about which the author seemed to be growing indifferent when he wrote Iris." In that play the two scenes, before and after dinner, separated by a curtain lowered for a minute or two, proved a rather clumsy and inartistic idea. This knowledge of stage-craft which has helped Mr.

Pinero to i access he gnined Miring the days dently it was about to fall. "This tree is coming down," whispered Mr. Pincro to Irving. Hold it up, hold it up," muttered Irving in his sepulchral tones. And he continued to, throw asides of Hold it up, hold it up," at the other unfortunate actor during the whole of the speech he was at that moment making.

Mr. Pinero did his best to hold it up--he thrust his whole weight against it, and, engaged in a kind of death-struggle with it which ended in its, crashing with an overwhelming noise almost on top of him. Irving calmly finished his speech, paying. no attention to the tree, and then, as though suddenly aware of something unusual happening, he turned and said "Ha! Where is the Dauphin? Let us go seek him," which gave him a chance to get off the stage, and no doubt suggested to the audience that Louis XI. had heard the noise and.

had grown anxious about the. imagining that he had fallen (lownstairs. it is curious to note the sw-ing; of the pendulum of taste. Mr. Arthur Roberts made himself first favourite in musical comedy by the lightning quickness of his patter, his incredibly agile gestures, his suggestion of a mind working at top speed all the time.

Mr. G. P. Huntley, who has stepped into Mr. Roberts's place, delights one by doing the revere.

He is slow of speech, lethargic in movement. He amuses us by letting us see how slowly his intellect works. Tn Hook of THE LEWIS CASE. Your leading article in regard to this case reminds me of a scene which I witnessed once in a London police -court. Two men were had up for stealing some clothes which had been left in a basket near to a laundrycart in the street.

Both pleaded not guilty." The magistrate said "If you plead not guilty I cannot deal with you-here. If you don't I can. You had better plead Both immediately did so--" one month." It me as a curious, farcical sort of justice. NORMAN BENNET. MORE PAY FOR TOMMY ATKINS.

There is absolutely no need for conscription to increase the strength of the British Army. If every soldier were paid a fair living wage, any number of men could be obtained. At the present moment a soldier is supposed to receive is. a day but, after numerous deductions have been made, he actually receives about 2d. If every man were to receive a clear L.

every day, with no deductions, there would be no lack of recruits. R. S. Forest Gate. IN MY GARDEN.

FEBRUARY 1. can now be safely said deadest part of the winter is over. Bad and bitter weather is, of course, still to come, but February in the garden is an interesting month. Whenever mild days come, one by one plants will awaken. Every week will see new shoots of green peeping from the ground.

And this is the month of snowdrops. Already many are out. Before long sheets of white will lie around us. Thus the time of flowers is With.us once more. E.

F. T. February 2, 1907. THE DAILY MIRROR. Page 7.

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