Sometimes he is a gold-digger, sometimes a dock laborer, sometimes a
soldier, sometimes a sailor, but whatever he is he wears
patent-leather boots.

He goes boating in patent leather boots, he plays cricket in them; he
goes fishing and shooting in them. He will go to heaven in
patent-leather boots or he will decline the invitation.

The stage hero never talks in a simple, straightforward way, like a
mere ordinary mortal.

"You will write to me when you are away, dear, won't you?" says the
heroine.

A mere human being would reply:

"Why, of course I shall, ducky, every day."

But the stage hero is a superior creature. He says:

"Dost see yonder star, sweet?"

She looks up and owns that she does see yonder star; and then off he
starts and drivels on about that star for full five minutes, and says
he will cease to write to her when that pale star has fallen from its
place amid the firmament of heaven.

The result of a long course of acquaintanceship with stage heroes has
been, so far as we are concerned, to create a yearning for a new kind