Let us hope there may be a speedy reform in the matter of the costume of the players,--at least in plays where the dresses are of our own time. You may count on your fingers the actresses in America who dress on the stage as _ladies_ dress in polite society. And as for the actors, I am afraid one hand has too many fingers for the tally. Because people go to the President's Ball in frock-coats is no reason why actors who undertake to look like fashionable gentlemen should outrage all conventional rules. I once saw a play in which a gentleman came to make an informal morning-visit to a lady in the country, in that dress which has received the bitterly ironical name of "full American uniform," that is to say, black dress-coat and trousers and black satin waistcoat; and the costume was made even more complete by a black satin _tie_, of many plaits, with a huge dull diamond pin in it, and a long steel watch-chain dangling upon the wretched man's stomach. He might have played his part to perfection,--which he did not, but murdered it in cold blood,--but he _might_ have done so in vain; nothing would or could absolve him from such a crime against the god of fashion or propriety. "Little things, these," the critic may say: and so our actors seem to think. But life is made up of little things; and if you would paint life, you must attend to them. Ask any one who has spent (wasted?) evening after evening at the Paris theatres about them; and, ten to one, he begins by praising the details, which, in their sum, conveyed the impression of perfection he brought away with him. Unless you are a little cracked on the subject of the stage, (as I confess I am,) and have talked with a French actor about it, you have no idea how systematically they train their young actors. I will tell you a few of the odd facts I picked up in long talks with my friend Monsieur D----. of the Theatre Francais.