Whatever its name may be in the different parts of the world, the entertainment is much the same. The most frequent item on the program is the comic song, often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes it is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant de la révue' which boosted General Boulanger into a furious but fleeting political popularity. Sometimes it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it is an almost epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.' Sometimes a singer of a more delicate art, like Yvette Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly sentimental appeal. There may be a swift succession of solos, male singers and female alternating, those of the most fame appearing latest, as is the practise in the first part of the Parisian open-air _café-chantant_, the Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets or trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned or diversified by dancing. There may be songs to be interpreted by half a dozen performers, accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the 'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom sprouted the long series of more and more elaborate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating with keen insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold aspects of tenement-house life in New York, and possessing a rich flavor of fun curiously akin to that which amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had sketched the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years ago. While the song and the song-and-dance and the song-and-parade may be the staple of the entertainment, the variety-show justifies its name by the medley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the dance unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the English music-halls, the Alhambra and the Empire in London, the ballet is the foremost attraction, providing an opportunity for the display of her dainty art to so exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genée. In New York it is now a refuge for the waifs and strays of vanishing negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to welcome the wandering conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing flipflaps on the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze or diving into the water in a tank. It acts as host to the trainer of performing animals, dogs and cats, seals and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to the ventriloquist, with his pair of stolid figures seemingly seated uncomfortably on his knees and actually supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers manipulate their mechanical mouths.