If there still linger in the remoter parts of Cromarty or the Balls Pond Road certain unsophisticated persons who believe that the stage is one long glad symposium of wine, woman and song they will be interested to know that Mr. KEBLE HOWARD has written his latest novel, _The Gay Life_ (JOHN LANE), with the express object--or so he says--of disillusioning them. He has no use for the cynic who declared that there are three sexes, men, women and actors. His Thespians are gay because they are happy, and happy because (though poor) they are virtuous. The crowning ambition of their lives of honest toil is not unlimited silk-stockings and champagne suppers, but the combined and unqualified approval of Mr. GRANVILLE BARKER and Miss HORNIMAN. I fear the Philistines will not be much impressed with Mr. KEBLE HOWARD'S championship. In the first place he selects for his heroine a girl of what used to be known as the "lower orders." Yet it is more than doubtful if the lower orders have ever done anything for Mr. KEBLE HOWARD except open his cab-doors and bring his washing home on Saturday night. Otherwise he would not make his East End of London heroine talk an argot of which fifty per cent, is pure East Side Noo York. True, "the curtain" finds her in New York in the arms of a faithful and acrobatic American, so perhaps it doesn't matter much. Meanwhile she has become the idol of the Manchester School, enjoyed an unsuccessful season in partnership with the late Sir HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE, and signed a contract with the SCHUBERTS to tour the States, and all without any apparent diminution of the guileless flow of "Whitechapel" with which she won the hearts of her first employers. It is courageous of Mr. HOWARD to place on record his apparent belief that a total absence of the three "R's" and any number of "h's" cannot debar a strong-minded daughter of the slums from the higher rungs of the histrionic ladder. * * * * *