) _Somebody remarks that_ ARNOLD _is_ NOT GUILTY.
COMIC CONVICT _receives a full pardon, and a matrimonial mania seizes
upon everybody. About this time it occurs to the stage manager that the
play might as well end. Accordingly it ends_.
_Everybody in the Audience_. "I don't begin to see into the plot yet,
but if some one would explain why Mrs. ARMITAGE became a fashionable
lady with a fondness for looking at convicts; why SILAS became a Warden
and afterwards went to India; why ARNOLD passed himself off upon his
regiment as an officer, merely because he had stolen a private's
clothes; why everybody, whether free or in prison, dead or alive, went
to the Quarries, to India, and back again to WILLOUGHBY'S country-seat
with unfailing unanimity; why, in short, things were as WATTS PHILLIPS
assures us that they were, I might begin to have some idea of what the
play is about."
But then--the undersigned would respectfully ask--what would one gain by
understanding the play? He would find it noisy and tedious, even if it
were intelligible. The admirable acting of Messrs.
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