In all the large Western cities there is a place of evening entertainment called the "Varieties Theatre," which ladies never attend, and in which three pleasures may be enjoyed at once,--smoking, drinking lager-bier, and witnessing a performance upon the stage. The chief patrons of these establishments are gentlemen connected with navigation, and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life," and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's intermission for three or four hours. At St. Louis, where gentlemen connected with navigation are numerous, the Varieties Theatre is large, highly decorated, conducted at great expense, and yields a very large revenue. To witness the performance, and to observe the rapture expressed upon the shaggy and good-humored countenances of the boatmen, was interesting, as showing what kind of banquet will delight a human soul starved from its birth. It likes a comic song very much, if the song refers to fashionable articles of ladies' costume, or holds up to ridicule members of Congress, policemen, or dandies. It is not averse to a sentimental song, in which "Mother, dear," is frequently apostrophized. It delights in a farce from which most of the dialogue has been cut away, while all the action is retained,--in which people are continually knocked down, or run against one another with great violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene, rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork, and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty to a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but the hold of a steamboat and the dull shores of the Mississippi! The Varieties Theatre of St. Louis, therefore, is a highly flourishing establishment, and the proprietor knows his business well enough to be aware that indecency never pays expenses in the United States,--as all will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band of five men and two beauteous nymphs exerted themselves slightly to entertain an audience of thirty men and boys. As the performers entered the building in view of the spectators, we are able to state that beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs go about the world disguised in dingy calico, and only appear in their true colors upon the stage.