The drama is queer. Life’s queer, for that matter, but queerness does most abound when Mr. Mansfield gives up elevating the stage and begins hoisting the lecture platform—or doesn’t, whichever is the latest news. Mansfield can earn some hundreds a week acting; wants to make it thousands, managing; fails, naturally, not having a spreadeagle mustache and sufficient capacity for the tender passion; abuses people for not supporting Art. Mansfield reminds the irreverent reader of Jno. Glimmer Screed, bewailing in the _Forum_ that he can only make five thousand dollars a year by his puissant pen and that his children must eat breadless butter or butterless bread, or other incomplete dietary, and live in a flat. These considerations suggest a legislative enactment of the “be and hereby is” sort, assessing upon the taxpayers the cost of paying fifty thousand dollars a year each to all people who are so lacking in the sense of humor as to suppose it makes any difference whether they eat bread or snow. * * * * * The drama isn’t queerer than literature. Laureate Austin, mere mention of whose name has been known to split a horse’s sides, dedicates _England’s Darling_ to the Princess of Wales by permission. No knowing whether the darling is the Princess or the Laureate without reading the verses, and that’s too much trouble. * * * * * Mr. Moulting Storrs Bigelow has lost the tail feathers of his prestige in the insurance business, which than his requires cheek even more adamantine. * * * * * Mr. Richard Harding Davis is being congratulated upon his “manly words about the Monroe doctrine,” wherewith the fifteen dollar a week hired-man-of-intellect in the Harper factory saved his fifteen thousand dollars a year article upon Venezuela from being quite so idiotic as it might have been. Dr. Conan Doyle prescribes peace with Great Britain to Uncle Sam, with a canny view to the sale of sedative Tales, uninterrupted by blockades. B’rer Crockett also loves the Americans. So does Sarah Grand. So would Screed and Beau Brummell Mansfield, if—— * * * * * The way to get rich is to sell paper, not like the newspaper publisher, who sometimes makes a hit buying tree paper at two cents a pound and selling it at the rate of one hundred fakes for five cents; that’s an uncertain business and requires a disciplined conscience, not to speak of capital, which is more rare. No, sell paper of the kind recommended by the Bucyrus _Authors’ Journal_ or the Dutch Flats _Cable Railway to Parnassus_. Here is the whole snap: 1. PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE: “Du Maurier is to receive fifty thousand dollars and a paid up accident policy for _The Martian_.”