istener.

"Done!" she cried, "didn't you see her flaunting herself around the stage
last night in silks and laces no honest girl could own? Where did the
money come from that paid for such finery?"

A few days later a woman who boarded in the house favored by the
mischief-maker happened to meet Mrs. Dickson, happily for me, and said,
_en passant_: "Which one of your ballet-girls is it who has taken to
dressing with so much wicked extravagance? I wonder Mrs. Ellsler don't
notice it."

Now Mrs. Dickson was Scotch, generous, and "unco" quick-tempered, and
after she had put the inquiring friend right, she visited her wrath upon
the originator of the slander in person, and verily the Scottish burr was
on her tongue, and her "r's" rolled famously while she explained the
component parts of that extravagant costume: window curtain--her
gift--and paper cambric and artificial flowers to the cost of one dollar
and seventy-five cents; "and you'll admit," she cried, "that even the
purse of a 'gude lass' can stand sic a strain as that; and what's mair,
you wicked woman, had the girl been worse dressed than the others, you
would ha' been the first to call attention to her as slovenly and
careless."

This was the first drop of scandal expressed especially for me, and I not
only found the taste bitter--very bitter--but learned that it had
wonderful powers of expansion, and that the odor it gives off is rather
pleasant in the nostrils of everyone save its object.

Mrs. Dickson, who, by the way, is still doing good work professionally,
has doubtless forgotten the entire incident, curtain and all, but she
never will forget the bonnie baby-girl she lost that summer, and she will
remember me because I loved the little one--that's a mother's way.

Mr. Peter B. Richings was that joy of the actor's heart--a character. He
had been accounted a very fine actor in his day, but he was a very old
man when I saw him, and his powers were much impaired. Six feet tall,
high-featured, Roman-nosed, elegantly dressed; a term from bygone
days--and not disrespectfully used--describes him perfectly: he was an
"old Buck!"

His immeasurable pride made him hide a stiffening of the joints under the
forced jauntiness of his step, while a trembling of the head became in
him only a sort of debonair senility at worst. Arrogant, short-tempered,
and a veritable martinet, he nevertheless possessed an unbending dignity
and a certain crabbed courtliness of manner v