0UR NEXT D00R. So have I. For something particularly cheerful,commend me to amateur theatricals. I always have passed some melancholyhours at them.

MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stageplays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on thestage. It is not always so.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has gotinto a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposedto be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in arecognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulsefrom within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but ofturning out a piece of literary work. That's the reason we have somuch poetry that impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-furniture made by machinery.