What Tom Robertson, whose personal experience of every variety of theatrical life was considerable, in his thoroughly English (let us be grateful for this, at all events) play of _Caste_ left to the imagination, in giving us Eccles as a widower, and bestowing an honest, hard-working lover on Polly (this was a mistake, except as a concession to respectability, for Polly was never meant to be a Mrs. Sam Gerridge, a small tradesman's wife, or, if she were, so much the worse for Sam), M. Halévy in his _Monsieur et Madame Cardinal_ has put before his readers very plainly. The scenes in Georges Ohnet's _Lise Flueron_ are not merely peculiar to the French stage; and only to those who want to know the seamy side of a strolling player's life would I recommend _A Mummer's Wife_, but not otherwise, as the realism of Mr. Moore's story is repulsive. Be it remembered, however, that the best chance for girls who seek an engagement at a London theatre, is to travel with a company “on tour,” and so learn experience by constant and frequently varying practice. “The Stage” is an art, and not a profession, and an art which, as a means of obtaining a bare livelihood, is open to everybody possessing ordinary natural faculties, offering employment without requiring from the applicants any special qualification or any certificate from schoolmaster, pastor, or master, and therefore it must be the resort of all who, unable or unwilling to do anything else, are content to earn their few shillings a week, and to be in the same category with Garrick, Macready, Phelps, and Kean; for the “super” who earns his money by strict attention to business, and who has night after night, for a lifetime, no more than a few lines to say, is briefly described in the census as “Actor,” as would be the leading tragedian or comedian of the day. He is a supernumerary, _i.e._, a supernumerary actor; and a supernumerary, abbreviated to “super,” attached to the theatre, he lives and dies. In civil and Government offices there are supernumeraries. They are supernumerary clerks, and none the less clerks on that account. If taken on to the regular staff they cease to be called supernumeraries, and if a super on the stage should exhibit decided histrionic talent, he, too, would cease to be a super and become an actor, that is, he would drop the qualification of “supernumerary.” So for the “extra ladies,” as they are politely termed, who are the female supers. As a rule, the extras are a good, hard-working people as you will find anywhere. They have “come down” to this, and in most cases consider their position as a descent in the social scale, no matter what they may have been before. A few may take the place for the sake of obtaining “an appearance,” with a view to something better; some as a means of honest livelihood, and to help the family in its “little house in Stangate;” and others, to whom a small salary is not so much an object as to obtain relief from the