"OTHELLO" is another idiotic person, who spoils what would otherwise have been a respectable play, by his stupid jealousy. How much better would the drama have been had the fifth act proceeded in this wise:--
OTHELLO.--"Desdy, my dear, are you in bed?"
DESDEMONA.--"Yes, and I'm sleepy too, and don't want to be bothered. There's your night-shirt hanging on the chair."
OTHELLO.--"IAGO tells me you've been flirting with Lieutenant CASSIO. Now that won't do. Remember that under the Fifteenth Amendment I have the right, being a colored man, of doing pretty much as I choose. If this flirtation isn't stopped promptly I'll go to Indiana, divorce you, and marry EMILIA. Do you know where the boot-jack is?"
DESDEMONA.--"I never did flirt with him, and IAGO tells a big story if he says I did. The boot-jack must have been kicked under the bed. As for flirting, after the way you have gone on with EMILIA, the less say about it the better. If you can't find the boot-jack, call the servant and let him pull your boots off--you'll catch your death if you go poking round under the bureau and sofa and things much longer."
OTHELLO.--"Of course it's all right, only don't have too much to say to him. There's that confounded boot-jack at last. You see, my dear, that people will talk if you give them the slightest reason. There's a button off this shirt. Are you all ready for me to put the gas out?"
With the extinction of the gas, the curtain would naturally fall. And it would fall upon a pleasant, well-constructed, probable, and eminently realistic play. As it is, OTHELLO ends with a complicated massacre worthy of the Bowery Theatre in its bloodiest days.
It seems that Water Valley, Mississippi, is attracting hosts of Swiss settlers, speaking of whom a contemporary calls them "iron-handed mountaineers." We were not previously aware that the Swiss are provided with iron hands, though we have long known that they have _glaciers_.
The man who tried to arrange his hair with an ice pick got it into a Nice Pickle.
What county of Scotland is the best to get a foot-hold in? Bute.
[Illustration: ANOTHER "SUCCESSFUL FRENCH SORTIE."]
The nations of Europe appear to suppose that their advance in civilization is marked by improvement in their rifles rather than in their school-houses. The possession of the needle-gun by Prussia stimulated France to invent the Chassepot, and now it appears that Russia claims to have a new rifle which surpasses them both. If we may judge from Prussia's actions in this war, this improvement in rifles leads to improvement in rifling; and though it is difficult to imagine how Russia could surpass Prussia's proficiency in this art, which in civil parlance would be called robbing, yet there is no knowing to what further point of perfection it may be carried. It is only to be hoped that the industry of Europe, which offers the field for the exercise of these improvements, will continue to be piously thankful for the noble position which it is thus made to hold in the march of progress.