require. Think of me meanwhile on a trading schooner, bound for the Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a cruise of—well, of investigation to what islands we can reach, and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where a letter addressed to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner or later; and if it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage with which you bear the contrary, will do me good.—Yours affectionately (although so near a stranger), ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. [Illustration] THE VAUDEVILLE THEATRE By Edwin Milton Royle ILLUSTRATED BY W. GLACKENS The Vaudeville Theatre is an American invention. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It is neither the Café Chantant, the English music-hall, nor the German garden. What has been called by a variety of names, but has remained always and everywhere pretty much the same—reeky with smoke, damp with libations, gay with the informalities of the half-world—is now doing business with us under the patronage of the royal American family. Having expurgated and rehabilitated the tawdry thing, the American invites in the family and neighbors, hands over to them beautiful theatres, lavishly decorated and appointed, nails up everywhere church and army regulations, and in the exuberance of his gayety passes around ice-water. He hasn't painted out the French name, but that is because he has been, as usual, in a hurry. Fourteen years ago this may have been a dream in a Yankee's brain; now it is a part of us. The strictly professional world has been looking for the balloon to come down, for the fad to die out, for the impossible thing to stop, but year by year these theatres increase and multiply, till now they flourish the country over. Sometimes the vaudeville theatre is an individual and independent enterprise; more often it belongs to a circuit. The patronage, expenses, and receipts are enormous. One circuit will speak for all. It has a theatre in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in Providence, and they give no Sunday performances; and yet these four theatres entertain over 5,000,000 people every year, give employment to 350 attachés and to 3,500 actors. Four thousand people pass in and out of each one of these theatres daily. Ten thousand dollars are distributed each week in salaries to the actors and $3,500 to the attachés. Take one theatre for example, the house in Boston. It is open the year round and it costs $7,000 a week to keep it open, while its patrons will average 25,000 every week. On a holiday it will play to from ten to twelve thousand people. How is it possible? [Illustration: Persons who secrete campaign rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 A.M. to 10.30 P.M.—Page 486.]