there, even. After it has been going on for half an hour, and the
people "up stage" have made themselves hoarse with shouting, and
somebody has been boisterously murdered and all the furniture upset,
then the people "down stage" "think they hear a noise."

The comic man always rows with his wife if he is married or with his
sweetheart if he is not married. They quarrel all day long. It must
be a trying life, you would think, but they appear to like it.

How the comic man lives and supports his wife (she looks as if it
wanted something to support her, too) and family is always a mystery
to us. As we have said, he is not a rich man and he never seems to
earn any money. Sometimes he keeps a shop, and in the way he manages
business it must be an expensive thing to keep, for he never charges
anybody for anything, he is so generous. All his customers seem to be
people more or less in trouble, and he can't find it in his heart to
ask them to pay for their goods under such distressing circumstances.

He stuffs their basket full with twice as much as they came to buy,
pushes their money back into their hands, and wipes away a tear.

Why doesn't a comic man come and set up a grocery store in our
neighborhood?

When the shop does not prove sufficiently profitable (as under the
above-explained method sometimes happens to be the case) the comic
man's wife seeks to add to the income by taking in lodgers. This is a
bad move on her part, for it always ends in the lodgers taking her in.
The hero and heroine, who seem to have been waiting for something of
the sort, immediately come and take possession of the whole house.