The Playgoer, contrary to his custom, reprints below parts of a very unusual criticism of stock-company work. Mr. Parker, the "H. T. P." of the Boston Transcript, is the critic. A company which can elicit such praise from "H. T. P." surely deserves double credit. The quotation follows:

Distinctly the new Boston Stock Company is taking a way of its own. Usually such companies prefer plays more or less standardized to their purposes, warranted to please their audience, of none too recent vintage. Instead, the players at the St. James have acted, for the most part, pieces seen in Boston no longer, ago than last season, hardly more than two seasons old in the whole American theatre. "Scandal," "Clarence," "The Passion Flower," "The Hottentot" --to name four of their five plays thus far--have all been so chosen. Resurrecting "Mamma's Affair," spying out "The Big Game," choosing the pieces aforesaid, the St. James escapes the rut of the sure and the standardized, adds to the current interest of the Bostonian stage.

By test of "The Hottentot," last evening, by good report of previous pieces, performance at the St. James escapes equally the usual shortcomings. Only one player in William Collier's whilom farce acted in conventional stock-company fashion--with half an eye and more on the audience, incessant play of mechanical gesture and glance, the air that says in fidgets: "You must look at me." Only one more suggested now and then the weary, wizened routine, the treadmill acting, that is the other pitfall of stock theatres. The rest came alertly, intelligently, to their parts, shaped them into such characters as the thinly sketched play permitted; had not only learned their "lines" without slip or hesi- tation, with well distributed emphasis and shadings, but also gave their speeches conversational air. The whole representation moved in brisk, elastic pace, free from stumble or jolt, from obvious patching and smoothing