gravely observe, 'This is not a comic song;' but London was soon unanimous that such exquisite comicality had not been heard for many a long year. Vilikins and his Dinah' created a furore. Englishmen and English women all agreed to go crazy about 'Vilikins.''Right tooral lol looral' was on every lip. Robson's portrait as Jem Baggs was in every shop-window. A newspaper began an editorial with the first line of Vilikins': "It's of a liquor merchant who in London did dwell.' A judge of assize, absolutely fined the high sheriff of a county one hundred pounds for the mingled contempt shown in neglecting to provide him with an escort of javelin-men, and introducing the irrepressible 'Right tooral lol looral' into a speech delivered at the opening of circuit. Nor was the song all that was wonderful in Jem Baggs. His make-up was superb. The comic genius of Robson asserted itself in an inimitable lagging gait, an unequaled snivel, a coat and pantaloons, every patch on and every rent in which were artistic, and a hat inconceivably battered, crunched, and bulged out of normal, and into preternatural shape." An inferior actor would have "slurred" this part; but Robson was a genius, and he made the part one of the most popular low-comedy pictures ever rendered on the stage. The story contains its own lesson for utility people. But utility people are seldom gifted with the genius of Robson, and it sometimes happens that with the very best intentions in the world, a man may fail-as was the case with Mr. Spriggs, an English utility man, whose story is told in his own words. "Yes, sir, a General Utility, and nothing more all my life now, till I get too old. It's hard lines, too, I can tell 106 UTILITARIAN SORROWS. you-not much pull got out of five-and-twenty or so a week, when you've got to find your own shoes, tights, swords and wig. Are the dresses a trouble to us? Ain't they rather? I wonder how you'd like it? But it's always my luck, drat it. Never comes a cutting, cold, beastly winter, but I've got to do a Roman citizen in Roman costume, fit to freeze your calves off-short sort o' thing—is it a toga? No-it ain't. It's a skirt not half so long, nor half as warm. With the wind blowing about your heels as if you was a windmill-only you ain't half so good at the price. See us utility men in our dressing-room, waiting to go on; say it's winter time and we've got a star down, Charles Kean, say, or Phelps, or some Yankee leading man for ten nights. Say it's 'Virginius' we're playing. Precious fine game for 'responsible utility man' when he has to go on-servant's speech-announcing the company-every cussed Roman name ending in us,' p'raps, and you knowing no more how to sound 'em than a cat knows about the Greek Testament. Then p'raps you'll have a blazing midsummer night-a regular 'greaser'-when the house in front feels as hot as a brickkiln, and you're togged up in furs and rabbit skins doing a wicked Russian nobleman or an oppressed Polish serf, and you melting all the while you're rubbing your hands and trying to look shivering at the cardboard pine trees all over snow, you know. That's been my luck, too, before now! Have I never had it worse than that? Haven't I cussed a bit when I had to study a little bit of French in such a piece as 'Belphegor, the Mountebank,' or The Wandering Jew?' I never got a good part-not likely a G. U. at a minor theatre should-unless he makes it himself—but I'm blest if I wouldn't rather study every line of 'Susan Hopley' than one of them crack-jaw bits that seem to me to have only been put in to lick us G. U.'s! If we don't know, why don't we ask somebody? Oh! yes, gravely observe, 'This is not a comic song;' but London was soon unanimous that such exquisite comicality had not been heard for many a long year. 'Vilikins and his Dinah' created a furore. Englishmen and English women all agreed to go crazy about Vilikins.''Right tooral lol looral' was on every lip. Robson's portrait as Jem Baggs was in every shop-window. A newspaper began an editorial with the first line of Vilikins': "It's of a liquor merchant who in London did dwell.' A judge of assize, absolutely fined the high sheriff of a county one hundred pounds for the mingled contempt shown in neglecting to provide him with an escort of javelin-men, and introducing the irrepressible 'Right tooral lol looral' into a speech delivered at the opening of circuit. Nor was the song all that was wonderful in Jem Baggs. His make-up was superb. The comic genius of Robson asserted itself in an inimitable lagging gait, an unequaled snivel, a coat and pantaloons, every patch on and every rent in which were artistic, and a hat inconceivably battered, crunched, and bulged out of normal, and into preternatural shape." An inferior actor would have "slurred" this part; but Robson was a genius, and he made the part one of the most popular low-comedy pictures ever rendered on the stage. The story contains its own lesson for utility people. But utility people are seldom gifted with the genius of Robson, and it sometimes happens that with the very best intentions in the world, a man may fail-as was the case with Mr. Spriggs, an English utility man, whose story is told in his own words. "Yes, sir, a General Utility, and nothing more all my life now, till I get too old. It's hard lines, too, I can tell |