me a letter of introduction to E. L. Davenport, then at the Chestnut Street Theatre. Davenport was such a big man, and I was such a small boy, that I hesitated before I faced him. I went out to Fairmount Park to take a walk and think about the matter. As I came to the bridge over the Schuylkill I took out that precious letter and thought I would read it over. Letters of introduction are always open and therefore always flattering to the introduced party, so I thought I would take a peep at the contents. It was a windy day, and while I read, the letter was blown into the river. hadn't the courage to ask Sanford for another letter, and I was half afraid of Davenport, anyway, so I dropped my high tragedy idea. Perhaps, later, high tragedy would have dropped me."

I

Mr. Wilson walked to his revolving chair and sat down.

*

**

"After that epistolary incident," he continued, playing with his watch-guard, “I went into the minstrel business, and Mackin and I did the country from Bangor to 'Frisco. In 1878 I played utility parts in the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. I had $15 a week for some time. I remember, as Farmer Banks, in Wild Oats,' I had to say, 'Nay, nay, you shall not pass this gate save over my dead body!' and I thought I was doing well. One night the man who played Lamp, the theatrical manager in Wild Oats,' was unable to appear, so they let me try the part. I think that was the happiest night of my professional career. I was a mere shaver at the time and yet I had two recalls!"

At this point of the autobiography, Mr. Wilson was interrupted by a faint tapping at the oak door. He rose and opened it.

**

The prettiest baby-girl in all babyland, blonde, fair skinned, with large, smiling eyes, toddled in, and ran to the comedian.

"This is our little girl," said Mr. Wilson. "Aren't you, Frances? She delights us daily with a million nothings. Now, chérie, here is a pencil and paper. Go and write.”

Baby proceeded to comply with the parental request, and the actor continued his story.

"I traveled, as you know, for years with Gill's Goblins.' I finally bought the piece, went to San Francisco with it, and, as you may not know, lost $5,000 in trying to be a manager. It was in San Francisco that I first appeared in comic opera. The piece was Pinafore,' and Sir Joseph was my part. My comic operatic début in the East was made under Col. McCaull in Philadelphia. The play was the Queen's Lace Handkerchief.' I was with the Colonel several years, and always

found him square and liberal. But I was tired of knocking about. I wanted to settle down. So I engaged to the Aronsons at the Casino, and there I am now comfortably at home."

Mr. Wilson now turned to his child and began to play with it.

As I looked leisurely around the room I noticed a portrait of Mrs. Wilson on the writing-desk. This lady, who was a Miss Barrie, is a distant relative of Père Hyacinthe. Her little daughter looks very much like her.

'I spend my days reading, fencing, walking, going to lectures," said my host. "I sometimes drop in at the Mohigan Club, of which I am a member, and I frequently try my hand at cards at the Whist Club. I get up at about eleven and go to bed at about two. Reading is my greatest pleasure. I have been studying up Napolean recently. I have gone through Lanfrey, Thiers, Taine and all that class. I like Napoleon. Languages and dialects are my hobby. I study French regularly. See, here is my volume of Madame de Sevigné turned down. Burns is one of my favorite poets."

"Tell me, Mr. Wilson," said I, "do you not tire of Cadeaux in 'Erminie,' a part which you have played so often. Do you play it with equal zest every night?"

66

Well," replied the actor, brushing back the single lock of hair which persists in falling over his brow, "I have some nights when I play with more interest than I do on others. I have a way of keeping myself up to the scratch, however. If I feel at all remiss, I single out some one individual in the audience, an old man, a young girl, a fat, prosaic woman, an elegant, impassive dude, and I play at that individual and watch the effect of my play on him or her. If the auditor is cold I try to break the crust of his reserve. If he is sympathetic, I try to do my best to merit his interest. Thus I vary the monotony of my part, and, besides, I add a bit of business' now and then, a hint, a squint, a gesture. I am a pretty keen observer. When in Paris, London, a few years, and in daily life here, I study characters. I make collections of oddities as an entomologist collects beetles."

*

**

Laughingly, Mr. Francis Wilson escorted me to the door.

"Are you an optimist or a pessimist in philosophy?" I ventured as a parting interrogation.

"Oh, I believe in a happy betweenity.'" We were in the hallway, and I stepped into the elevator. Francis Wilson wished me goodbye in his demure, cavernous voice, and with a grasp of the hand. Lewis Rosenthal.

IN THE LIMELIGHT'S GLARE.

How often have you heard it said that women are the devil." That is one of the pat aphorisms of life, and as to its reliability and general worth I will refer you to Tony Pastor, who sings a ballad called "Woman, lovely Woman," thereby stating many caustic facts concerning the bebustled mothers of us all, at the same time giving, by means of a limpid bare-of-tone voice, much pleasure-to himself. Whether Mr. Pastor's pointers are only intended for bits of melodized persiflage, or for straight, philosophic truths, is hard to say; but that maids and matrons, "perfect ladies" and all feminine kind, are different from men in more ways than one I feel free to say from this evanescent corner of the bright little, tight little, quite little THEATRE. They are nice, you know, and all that sort of thing, even if they can't drive horse-cars. I am twice as dispassionate as most men I meet, yet if my muse didn't keep her poems under lock and key, I'm sure I would be forever twining idyls about white necks, and juggling those Swinburnian roundels that begin "O, archéd eyebrow," and end "O, archéd eyebrow." Yet I am far from thinking that a woman is lovable because she isn't a man. There are such dreadful samples of females all over the lot. I have seen whole rooms full of them-lecture rooms or church vestries-for which I would not trade one meek little red-nosed letter-carrier. Not that I would judge a drove of women from their personal appearances, yet there is a steely glint about an eye, a pickled expression suffused over a mouth, which settles it, and makes you turn away and seek happy voluptuousness in eyes and lips that are not so all-fired self-sufficient, but seem to say, in Gilbert's words, while the music plays: "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, ere I die of shame—a.” It is really too bad that beauty is so important to a girl's success and happiness. Every man knows one girl who is so sensible, so perfectly poised, and so good withal that she makes everybody very fond of her, men and women alike. Her society is a treat. She talks well, she looks you straight in the eye, and she is matter-of-fact from the word go. But this exceptional girl is not pretty, and among all the men who are glad to know her, none is her lover. If she had been a beauty and had had her string of lovers, would her intellectual worth and her moral solidity have been so perfect? Right here it would be possible for some one who got a compliment last night to say, "Just as though a girl couldn't be pretty and have common sense." Why yes, certainly, they could be, but whether they are or not you may ask of the sweet thing on the other side of the pier glass. What is

Beauty, anyway? Does it actually exist, or is it all in your eye? Shouldn't the frisk and white divinity who sways whole brokerage firms by means of her bisque-like coloring and soft texture be very thankful that she was not born like that down among the Africans. I've no doubt that Chimpanzees have their ideas of physical shapeliness. Imagine that Mary Anderson had been shipwrecked off the coast of Monkeyland when she was a rosy little baby, and that obliging dolphins had saved her from the otherwise obliterated shipload, and laid her on the warm beach, cradled in a pink sea-shell. Then suppose that she was discovered here by a lot of little Chimpanzees who were down in that neighborhood playing leap-frog, and they, wondering, much as we would wonder if we ever found a bright smile on the face of a ticketseller in a theatre box-office, should take the crowing darling to the old folks at home. These would adopt her, treat her kindly, and feed her on chestnuts. She would develop into the glory of womanhood, and yet never know the luxury of a bustle. She would see her companions, her "ladifrends," being wooed and won, while she remained neglected. She would, perhaps, lose her heart to the little dude Chimpanzee, Crowley, and he would pity her infatuation, and in the mystic sign language of his race would say: Mary, it cannot be. I like you, because you're good, but you ain't the right color and you can't stand on your head." And there would be Mary, just as beautiful as she is now, you know, but utterly unappreciated. That Rider Haggard story of mine is a regular sop to homely girls, isn't it? We men are the Chimpanzees, and don't know a good thing when we see it.

But now about this beauty question as applied to women. I've an idea that popular beauties are seldom real beauties. This is not the usual sneer at popular taste, but it seems to me a fact that the most valuable charms-a finishing excellence in the expression, a palpable indication of a refined soul or something or other of that sort-are often sacrificed to the admiration of mere flesh-and-blood undulations and pinkness. Tony Lumpkin illustrates my idea when he responds to Hastings' suggestion that Miss Neville should be allowed some beauty by saying, “Ah! could you but see Bet Bouncer of these parts, you might then talk of beauty. Ecod! she has two eyes as black as cloes, and cheeks as broad and red as a pulpit cushion. She'd make two of she." When a man gets very healthy, so that he wheezes when he laughs, it is size and expanse in femininity which quickens his blood more than anything else. True simplicity and slim loveliness exerts a spell only over poets and old roués. Pauline Hall will continue to queen it

over the multitude till she works on fifty more pounds of flesh, and then her voluptuousness will be called fat and she may have to leave the stage and sell her hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewels. In the meantime the dainty slenderness of Rose Ulmer Maybud will be appreciated only by romantic tenor singers.

While journeying on an elevated train at 9 A.M. yesterday, I saw, from out a tiresome wilderness of morning papers and high collars, a really pretty girl. If an article such as the one I am now grinding off needed inspiration, I should trace it to that girl's eyes. Eyes, my lord, are what should tell you more of a girl than anything else about her. I can't stop to tell you what the various expressions indicate, but of these eyes on the L train, I would say that they seemed like two violets that were grieving because a beloved rose on the opposite side of the garden path had been plucked and carried away. There was the concentration of years of sorrow, and yet the girl's blood was not tinged in the slightest from it. She probably inherited that expression. It was the reflection of passed-away suffering that had been bravely borne. A friend of mine said when I told him: "Yes, she had probably been cultivating that ever since she entered a boarding-school." But as she got off the train at Cortlandt street, I imagine she was something like a cashier in a wholesale grocery store. If I meet her on the L road in five years from now she'll be transformed. The atmosphere of the grocery store will paralyze that sad expression. And if she ever strays into the chorus of a burlesque opera troupe, that wordless pleading, that gazing out for sympathy, will be supplanted by an alert stare for champagne suppers. But under the latter circumstances she won't starve, provided she thickens up a bit. Her moral worth will then depend upon her bringing up. She may be unable to bring up against a middle-aged Wallstreeter, and be forced to content herself with a salaried minion. However, at this moment, there's a simple beauty at large in New York. I'm aware of my ambiguity in trying to tell, while maintaining the requisite journalistic propriety, that men of to-day admire flesh in women and not soul. Why, I once knew a girl-But there, excuse me, I'm tired of this.

C. M. S. McLellan.

THE THEATRE will shortly begin publishing the portraits of the leading New York Amateur Actors-taking first those members of the Amateur Comedy Club.

THE WEEK.

THE chief event of the theatrical week was the production of David D. Lloyd's play of "The Dominie's Daughter," at Wallack's. It had all the possible encouragement of a first night audience and an enthusiastic reception from the author's friends. American playwriters thus far seem to be treated rather well, after all, and anybody who has any sort of an acquaintance has no reason to complain, It is very likely that out of the thousands of plays offered to American managers, the chances are that those refused have been properly considered. Mr. Lloyd had all the advantages of Wallack's theatre, Thursday night, and his success is owing in a great measure to the thoughtful care expended in the production of the piece. But it is a play the author may well feel proud of; its atmosphere is wholesome and intellectual, and its originality is sufficiently so to protect him from the insinuations of jealous critics. The story may be briefly set down. Two English officers in the Revolutionary war are stationed in New York during the possession of Manhattan Island by the British. They are both in love with the same girl, but the disagreeable duties which they are compelled to perform, arresting the brother of the girl as a spy, and also arresting her father, the Dominie, for his rebellious utterances, bring about, as may naturally be supposed, some exceedingly embarrassing positions. One of these officers, however, Major Barton (Herbert Kelcey), makes an unnecessary arrest of the Dominie (Harry Edwards), in order that by securing his subsequent release he may obtain the hand of Molly (Miss Robe). This seeming duty he relegates to Captain Dyke (Kyrle Bellew). She is, however, in love with Dyke, and believes in him to the last, but her horror upon hearing of her father's sufferings is such that, in order to save him, she gives her hand to Barton. The dramatic surprise of the play occurs in the last act. Molly is about to be married to Barton. It is in fact the hour of the ceremony. An affecting meeting occurs between Molly and Dyke, and they part with love on their lips, but she stands true to her promise. As the bell tolls for the marriage, Barton starts to lead her within the church, and the villagers are gathering about them. Suddenly Barton declares that he finds his love for her too great to sacrifice her life, and with noble spirit places her hand in that of his rival, Captain Dyke!

There are four acts in the play. The second and also the last is a most charming rural scene near the old Boston road, now Chatham Street. The arrangement of the old church and the adjacent grounds, with the landscape beyond, is all very beautiful indeed.

Miss Robe gives one of her best performances of the season as Molly. It is a very sweet embodiment of a character full of touching pathos, womanly tenderness and love. Mr. Bellew is manly and picturesque as Dyke, and the rather ungrateful part of Barton is acted with careful consideration by Mr. Kelcey. Mr. Edwards, as the old dominie, plays a part that is distinctly different from his own bluff and hearty ways, but he puts into it the necessary dignity and ease, and much judiciousness. Mr. Charles Groves is delightful as honest Hiram Brown, the bell-ringer and watchman. There is in this actor a most pleasing warmth of feeling and sturdy ruggedness of the most attractive kind. Mme. Ponisi as the Aunt, Miss Russell as Dorothy, Miss Blaisdell as Ann, and Creston Clarke as Robert, are certainly all that the author could desire. He has the very best of opportunities given for fair judgment of his play. Of the piece itself it could be discussed more fairly at length, but given only a half hour to write a notice of it before THE THEATRE goes to press, will not admit of much time nor space for discussion. There are some things in it that could be improved, but altogether it is really an admirable work. Many will not agree with the author regarding the motives which often stir the persons of the drama, and some things seem not altogether logical. But "The Dominie's Daughter" can be set down as a very bright American play, and full of patriotic sentiment, which is discreetly set forth. These lines are said by Mme. Ponisi as the Aunt:

Mark my words, the time will come when the English people will rain down praises on General Washington! He fought for English principles when an English king forgot thein !

***

THE third performance of "Nero," at the Metropolitan, was even better than the others. It would seem as if an operatic production which is attended with such remarkable success ought to have an extended run here, and so arranged as to create a profit for the management. The more one hears of "Nero" the more exquisite does the music seem to become. It has a noble dramatic movement, which must be immediately noticed. There is some sense in the story; its libretto was not written for babies or for people who are carried away by absurd idealisms. It is grand opera without being encumbered by long stretches of dreary waste and musical platitudes. It is the work of a genius, backed up by Mr. Hock's skill and Mr. Thomas's understanding, and has been appreciated in this country by thousands of intelligent people. "Nero" will have its final representations this week, and the opportunity to hear it must not be neglected.

ON Tuesday last a contract was signed whereby for a term of years James H. Bailey, T. Henry French and Frank Sanger became the lessees of the property at present known as the Cosmopolitan. On this site, which is well adapted for the purpose, they will on May I begin to erect a large and commodious theatre, which will probably cost not less than $200,000. Of this Mr. Sanger will be the manager. It is to be called the Broadway Theatre. The announcement is already made that the opening will take place in October, and that the Booth-Barrett Company will be the first attraction. This statement is probably rather premature.

** **

HENRY IRVING's repertory for his next American season will include "Faust," "Olivia" and "Jingle," three characters which he has not hitherto acted upon the American stageMephistopheles, Alfred Jingle and Dr. Primrose, in "The Vicar of Wakefield."