Minnie Palmer, if all reports be true, came to the front some time ago with a new bid for a free advertisement. She entertained a Louisville _Courier-Journal_ reporter with a display that must have made the young man blush. "Our company has got into the chemise fever," exclaimed Minnie, artlessly, "and we're trying to see which can make the prettiest one. I'll show them to you," and then, regardless of the helpless man's blushes, she disemboweled a trunk and buried him beneath an avalanche of snowy underwear. Their construction was minutely explained, and then the conversation naturally led to flannels, which Minnie confidentially remarked could not be worn by actors because of the risk of colds when compelled to leave them off. The theme could scarcely be pursued further than flannels, and the interview closed with Minnie's confession that she didn't like to be hugged on the stage in warm weather. In winter, and unencumbered by flannels, the operation was not so distasteful. All of this may seem irrelevant, and having very little to do with dramatic art, but it made a column for Minnie all the same. The Abbott Kiss, invented by John T. McEnnis, a reporter on the St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_, but always claimed by Jimmy Morrissey, who was her agent at the time, traveled everywhere and was printed in every newspaper from New York to San Francisco. It had just about played out when in 1881, during the prevalence of small-pox, Miss Abbott had herself vaccinated on one of her lower limbs, and again the papers advertised her. She afterwards acted in the capacity of interviewer for the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and was commissioned to get a talk out of Patti, but spent all the time she was with the diva in kissing and hugging her, and when she came away from her had nothing to write about. Still Miss Abbott is a hard-working, gifted, and agreeable little lady, and must be regarded as the best lyric prima donna America can boast of. Speaking about Patti: she came to the United States under foreign management, and with all her sweetness and beauty of voice and the greatness of her reputation, she could do nothing until an American manager who understood the art of advertising took hold of her. He began his work at once by decorating his theatre in lavish style for her first concert, and completed his initial triumph by causing a crowd of young fellows to unhitch the horses from Patti's carriage and run with the vehicle through the streets to her hotel. The report next day said the amateur horses were society swells, and so the news went into every State of the Union. Neilson's carriage was dragged through the street in the same way once at Toronto. Patti got another free "ad." by visiting Paddy Ryan, the pugilist John Sullivan knocked out of time, in his training quarters at New Orleans, just as Bernhardt went to see Englehardt's whale at Boston for the sake of the advertisement she got.