For the rest, the piece was fairly well acted. But when the Curtain had fallen for the last time, and the audience were departing more in sadness than in anger, I could not help asking myself the question, Had the advantages obtained in witnessing the performance balanced the expense incurred in securing a seat? I am forced to reply in the negative, as I sign myself regretfully, ONE WHO PAID FOR A PLACE IN THE PIT. * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. I see three ladies in a drawing-room, each with a green volume. "What is it?" No, they won't hear. Each one is intent on her volume, and an irritable answer, in a don't bother kind of manner, is all that I can obtain. The novel is Miss BRADDON's latest, _One Life, One Love_ (but three volumes, for all that), in which they are absorbed. Later on, at intervals, I get the volumes, and, raven-like, secrete them. I can quite understand the absorption of my young friends. Marvellous, Miss BRADDON! Very few have approached you in sensation-writing, and none in keeping up sensationalism as fresh as ever it was when first I sat up at night nervously to read _Aurora Floyd_, and _Lady Audley's Secret_. In this bad time of year (I am writing when the snow is without, and the North-East wind is engaged in cutting leaves), the Baron recommends remaining indoors with this Three-volume Novel as a between lunch and dinner companion, only don't take it up to your bed-room, and sit over the fire with it, or--but there, I won't mention the consequences. Keep it till daylight doth appear. The Baron being a busy man--no, Sir, not a busy-body,--is grateful to the authors of good short stories in Magazines. Many others agree with the Baron, who wishes to recommend "Saint or Satan" in _The Argosy_; The story of an "Old Beau," which might have been advantageously abbreviated in _Scribner_; an odd tale entitled, "The Phantom Portrait," in the _Cornhill_; which leaves the reader in doubt as to whether he has been egregiously "sold" or not; and, above all, the short and interesting--too short and most interesting--paper on THACKERAY, in _Harper's Monthly_, with fac-similes of some of the great humorist's most eccentric and most spirited illustrations, conceived in the broadly burlesquing spirit that was characteristic of GILRAY and ROWLANDSON. THACKERAY, philosopher and satirist, who can take us behind the scenes of every show in _Vanity fair_, who can depict the career of the scoundrel _Barry Lyndon_, of the heathen _Becky Sharp_, and the death-bed of the Christian soldier and gentleman, _dignissimus, Colonel Newcome_, could on occasion, and when a rollicking spirit moved him, put on a pantomime mask (have we not his own pathetic vignette representing him doing this?) to amuse the children, or give us some rare burlesque writing and drawing to set us all on the broad grin. The Baron trusts that Mrs. RITCHIE will give us more of this, and sincerely hopes that there may be a "lot more"