over
the theater looking for Mr. Fox. I found him haggling over the price of
some vegetables which he was selling at the stage door and which had
been contributed by admirers and old subscribers to Mr. O'Connor at a
previous performance.

When Mr. Fox got through with that I presented to him my card, which is
as good a piece of job work in colors as was ever done west of the
Missouri river, and to which I frequently point with pride.

Mr. Fox said he was sorry, but that Mr. O'Connor had instructed him to
extend no courtesies whatever to the press. The press, he claimed, had
said something derogatory to Mr. O'Connor as a tragedian, and while he
personally would be tickled to death to give me two divans and a
folding-bed near the large fiddle, he must do as Mr. O'Connor had
bid--or bade him, I forget which; and so, restraining his tears with
great difficulty, he sent me back to the entrance and although I was
already admitted in a general way, I went to the box office and
purchased a seat. I believe now that Mr. Fox thought he had virtually
excluded me from the house when he told me I should have to pay in order
to get in.

I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large
and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.

Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening
under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called "Egmont."
The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to
take a note to Mr. O'Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had
returned with the statement that Mr. O'Connor was busy rehearsing his
soliloquy and removing a shirred egg from his outer clothing.

He also said he could not promise an audience to any one. It was all he
could do to get one for himself.

So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is in
front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with
long-handled hay knives are on guard.

All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and
stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net
over his head--so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any
flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys it.
Nobody seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as quick
as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the head with
a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I knew th