The Stranger reads from morning to night, as his servant Francis reports of him. When he bestows a purse upon the aged Tobias, that he may be enabled to purchase his only son's discharge from the army, he first sends away Francis with the stage-book, that there may be no witness of the benevolent deed. "Here, take this book, and lay it on my desk," says the Stranger; and the stage direction runs: "Francis goes into the lodge with the book." Bingley, it is stated, marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. Two acts later, and the Stranger is again to be beheld, "on a seat, reading." But after that he has to put from him his precious book, for the incidents of the drama demand his very serious attention. Dismissed from the Stranger, however, the stage-book probably reappears in the afterpiece. In how many dramatic works figures this useful property--the "book of the play"? Shakespeare has by no means disdained its use. Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of "Cymbeline." She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance: Almost midnight, madam. IMOGEN. I have read three hours, then; mine eyes are weak. Fold down the leaf where I have left! To bed! By-and-by, when Iachimo steals from his trunk to "note the chamber," he observes the book, examines it, and proclaims its nature: She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus! here's the leaf turned down Where Philomel gave up. Brutus reads within his tent: Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think. How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here? And thereupon enters the ghost of Caesar, and appoints a meeting at Philippi. In the third act of "The Third Part of King Henry VI.," that monarch enters, "disguised, with a prayer-book." Farther on, when a prisoner in the Tower, he is "discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the Lieutenant attending;" when Gloucester enters, abruptly dismisses the Lieutenant, and forthwith proceeds to the assassination of the king. But Gloucester himself is by-and-by to have dealings with the "book of the play." In the seventh scene of the third act of "King Richard III.," a stage direction runs: "Enter Gloucester in a gallery above, between two bishops." Whereupon the Lord Mayor, who has come with divers aldermen and citizens to beseech the duke to accept the crown of England, observes: See where his grace stands 'tween two clergymen! Says Buckingham: Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay him from the fall of vanity; And, see, a book of prayer in his hand; True ornaments to know a holy man.