humorous opprobrium, and the villagers will get a day off and hang
about the village pub and hoot me. Everybody will see through my
villainy, and I shall be nabbed in the end. I always am. But it is
no matter, I will be a villain--ha! ha!"

On the whole, the stage villain appears to us to be a rather badly
used individual. He never has any "estates" or property himself, and
his only chance of getting on in the world is to sneak the hero's. He
has an affectionate disposition, and never having any wife of his own
he is compelled to love other people's; but his affection is ever
unrequited, and everything comes wrong for him in the end.

Our advice to stage villains generally, after careful observation of
(stage) life and (stage) human nature, is as follows:

Never be a stage villain at all if you can help it. The life is too
harassing and the remuneration altogether disproportionate to the
risks and labor.

If you have run away with the clergyman's daughter and she still
clings to you, do not throw her down in the center of the stage and
call her names. It only irritates her, and she takes a dislike to you
and goes and warns the other girl.

Don't have too many accomplices; and if you have got them, don't keep
sneering at them and bullying them. A word from them can hang you,
and yet you do all you can to rile them. Treat them civilly and let
them have their fair share of the swag.

Beware of the comic man. When you are committing a murder or robbing