It makes no difference to the miniature men and women who are Humpty Dumpty's best friends and admirers, how the mechanical effects of a pantomime are produced. They do not care much to know that the pig Humpty Dumpty and Pantaloon stretch across the width of the stage in an endeavor to tear it from each other, has a rubber body; that the bricks the clown throws at everybody are only paper boxes; that the trick pump is worked from the side scenes with a string; that the clothes which suddenly, and as if by some invisible influence, vanish into the sides of houses or up through windows have light but strong black thread, which the little ones cannot see at a distance, attached to them; the big policeman is to them a stern and gigantic reality; and it affords them more fun to imagine every time Humpty throws or makes a blow at anybody, that the stinging sound is a sure indication that his aim was well taken--they do not know that the sound as of receiving a blow is the result of slapping the hands together. All the simple illusions of the scene and of the action are to them actual facts, and they appear all the more ridiculous and are all the more effective on this account. When Humpty Dumpty dives through the side of a house, disappearing behind, there are men in waiting to catch him, and when he sits down to read his newspaper and the candle begins to grow beyond his reach, then falling as he attempts to go higher with a sudden bang, and the clown comes tumbling down after it as Jill did after Jack when they went up the hill for the bucket of beer, few of the big or little people know that the candle runs down through one of the legs of the table and is all wood except the waxen bit at the top. All these little mysteries have their charms for the years of childhood, and in no country are the pleasures of the pantomime so fully recognized as in England, where on Boxing Night--the 26th of December--children crowd the theatres to witness the Christmas pantomime. In some theatres here the custom of providing pantomime for the Christmas holidays is adhered to, but as there are not enough Grimaldis or Foxes or Adamses or Fraziers to go around, the supply being very limited, we cannot compete with England in this respect.