A cook, a Frenchwoman, once in the service of a dramatic critic, did not visit the theatre, and stated as her reason for not caring to do so that she took no interest in the affairs of other people; and secondly, that if she went and got moved by the troubles of the _dramatis personae_ the thought suddenly occurred to her that they were not real persons and real troubles, and therefore she had wasted her sympathy, wherefore she was vexed, being an economical creature, so far as sympathy, not butter, is concerned. On the other hand, she admitted the payment of a number of visits to Pézon's circus, where they had a lion with a bad reputation, into whose jaw at every performance a _décolletée_ lady put her painted head. For the _cordon-bleu_ hoped that the lion would exhibit disapproval of the paint and powder by chumping off the offending head, and that would have been frightfully thrilling. Also she had a grievance because our executions are not public. She would like to see the murderers _gigoter un peu_; to her that would be a more sublime spectacle than the most prodigious effects at His Majesty's. The papers lately contained accounts of the production at a music-hall of bioscope pictures of a horrible catastrophe in which many lives were lost, and stated that they were received with applause from the spectators, who derived much pleasure from looking at them. The French wielder of the _bouquet-garni_, in default of more bloodthirsty entertainment, would be delighted by them. It has often been remarked that an element of danger in a public performance is an element of attraction, and that the attraction is in proportion to the danger. These remarks are not entirely disconnected: they are relevant in considering the question why people go to the theatre. For, with all respect to the establishments of the highest class, one must recognize the fact that there is a family relation between the noblest theatre and the humblest side-show at a country fair or East End museum. To be juster, the family relation is not between the things seen, but between the feelings which prompt people to pay money to see them. It is often a mere toss-up whether X, Y or Z goes to a theatre or a music-hall, or a collection of "side shows" or a boxing-match; and the only solid wall of demarcation in pleasuredom lies between going to see something which pretends to be something else, and going to see something which admits itself to be its painful self. On the one hand, we have Smith posing as the Prince of Denmark; on the other the fat woman, whose unpleasant mass of unhealthy flesh is real--the lady giant hovers between reality and fiction. On the one side art, on the other artless entertainment; but, after all, it is difficult to say that this wall is very solid, since sometimes the artless department is abominably artful, and sometimes, as in the famous story of the mimic with a live pig in a poke, the real is an impostor.