But the present Chancellor has, clearly, missed his opportunities. Let him visit our theatres and there recognize the futility of his pretence that their primary business is to present drama. He will see at once that what he put forward as a main business is in reality a mere parergon. Drama is presented, but only as an agreeable, not too obtrusive, accompaniment to the eating of chocolate. The curtain goes up, and the ladies in the audience, _distraites_, and manifestly feeling with Mrs. Gamp (or was it Betsy Prig?) a sort of sinking, yawn through the first scene or two. Then there is a rustle of paper wrappings, little white cardboard boxes are brought out and passed from hand to hand, there is a dainty picking and choosing of round and square and triangular, with a knowing rejection of the hard-toffee-filled ones, and now the fair faces are all set in a fixed smile of contentment and the fair jaws are steadily, rhythmically at work. To an unprepared observer it cannot be a pretty sight. Fair Americans chewing gum are nothing to it. There are superfine male voluptuaries who do not much care to see women eat, even at the festive board. But to see scores of women simultaneously eating chocolates at the theatre is an uncanny thing. They do it in unison, and they do it with an air of furtive enjoyment, as though it were some secret vice and all the better for being sinful. The act-drop goes up and down, actors are heard talking or the orchestra playing, men pass out for a cigarette and repass, but the fair jaws never cease working. The habit of needlework, lace-making, and perhaps war knitting has given lovely woman that form of genius which has been defined as a long patience. They eat chocolates with the monotonous regularity with which they hemstitch linen or darn socks. It has been said that women go to church for the sake of the _hims_, but they go to the theatre for the sake of chocolates. And the Lord Chancellor, good, easy man, says the primary business of the theatre is to present drama!