afterward, bury them there and put up rude crosses over the graves to
mark the spot.

The comic lovers are often very young, and when people on the stage
are young they _are_ young. He is supposed to be about sixteen and
she is fifteen. But they both talk as if they were not more than
seven.

In real life "boys" of sixteen know a thing or two, we have generally
found. The average "boy" of sixteen nowadays usually smokes cavendish
and does a little on the Stock Exchange or makes a book; and as for
love! he has quite got over it by that age. On the stage, however,
the new-born babe is not in it for innocence with the boy lover of
sixteen.

So, too, with the maiden. Most girls of fifteen off the stage, so our
experience goes, know as much as there is any actual necessity for
them to know, Mr. Gilbert notwithstanding; but when we see a young
lady of fifteen on the stage we wonder where her cradle is.

The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that the
hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love
in, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit about
in picturesque attitudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do
it out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the
center, and moonlight.

The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all the
time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrow
rooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire.