thirty, and the oldest about double that age. The Doctor must have
rescued them from Epsom Race Course, and apparently is attempting to
give them an education fitting them to follow what seems to be his own
calling--the profession of an undertaker. These elderly pupils follow
their kind preceptor (for, although he is called _Burch_, there is
not the slightest suggestion of the rod about him, and, moreover, his
charges are really too elderly to receive chastisement) to the Royal
Exchange, the Thames Embankment, and, lastly, to the Empire. During
their travels, they meet _Mr. Rapless_, known as "the Oofless Swell,"
(a part amusingly played by Mr. W. WARDE), and _John Brough_, a
carpenter with a taste for ballet costumes and drink, the carpenter's
wife, and the carpenter's child. _Dr. Burch_, who is evidently
easy-going, but good-hearted, after flirting with a lady who has her
boots cleaned before the Royal Exchange, suddenly developes into a
philanthropist, not to say a divine. On the carpenter's wife and
child appearing on the Thames Embankment in the characters of would-be
suicides, the worthy pedagogue convinces them (to quote the programme)
"That they have no right to take away the lives which the Almighty has
placed in their hands." Mother and child are quickly convinced, and
the neat but drunken father (Signorina MALVINA CAVALAZZI) appearing
on the scene, the good man informs him that his wife and child are
dead, "driven to an untimely grave by his (the intemperate but natty
artisan's) desertion and cruelty." The effect of this inaccurate
statement is startling. To quote once more from the argument,
"incontinently the now penitent ruffian falls fainting to the ground."
But he is brought back to himself, his better self, by his child
whispering "Father!" The situation is full of pathos, even when
witnessed from the Stalls. Recovering his senses, the converted
carpenter promptly borrows money from the good old Doctor, and when
that estimable gentleman is about to enter the Empire Theatre of