[Illustration: "YES, I ONCE SAW HIM PLAY WHEN I WAS QUITE A LAD. ON THAT OCCASION HE HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO DROP A CATCH."] * * * * * AT THE PLAY. "HIS LADY FRIENDS." The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs. NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent, is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence. However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition, who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine." [Illustration: "I want to spread a little sunshine." _James Smith_ ... Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY. _Eva Johns_ ... Miss JOAN BARRY.] This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult one for a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in the neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of his superfluous wealth. The natural affection, however, which his generosity inspired was not utilised by him, and you must try to believe that, in spite of the most sinister appearances, he remained a faithful husband. With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will herself do all the necessary squandering.