rrel," and one morning he wrote me a letter with the following
postscript written in big letters:

"THERE DO EXIST SUCH THINGS AS HONEST MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

"There, my Eleanora Delicia" (this was his name for me, my real,
full name being Ellen Alicia), "stick that up in some place where
you will often see it. Better put it on _your looking-glass_. And
if you can once get those words into your noddle, it will save you
a world of unhappiness."

I think he was quite right about this. Would that he had been as right
in his theories about stage management! He was a rare one for realism.
He had _preached_ it in all his plays, and when he produced a one-act
play, "Rachael the Reaper," in front of "The Wandering Heir," he began
to practice what he preached--jumped into reality up to the neck!

He began by buying _real_ pigs, _real_ sheep, a _real_ goat, and a
_real_ dog. _Real_ litter was strewn all over the stage, much to the
inconvenience of the unreal farm-laborer, Charles Kelly, who could not
compete with it, although he looked as like a farmer as any actor could.
They all looked their parts better than the real wall which ran across
the stage, piteously naked of _real_ shadows, owing to the absence of
the _real_ sun, and, of course, deficient in the painted shadows which
make a painted wall look so like the real thing.

Never, never can I forget Charles Reade's arrival at the theater in a
four-wheeler with a goat and a lot of little pigs. When the cab drew up
at the stage-door, the goat seemed to say, as plainly as any goat could:
"I'm dashed if I stay in this cab any longer with these pigs!" and while
Charles Reade was trying to pacify it, the piggies escaped!
Unfortunately, they didn't all go in the same direction, and poor dear
Charles Reade had a "divided duty." There was the goat, too, in a nasty
mood. Oh, his serious face, as he decided to leave the goat and run for
the pigs, with his loose trousers, each one a yard wide at least,
flapping in the wind!

"That's a relief, at any rate," said Charles Kelly, who was watching the
flight of the pigs. "I sha'n't have those d----d pigs to spoil my acting
as well as the d----d dog and the d----d goat!"

How we all laughed when Charles Reade returned from the pig-hunt to
rehearsal with the brief direction to the stage manager that the pigs
would be "cut out."

The reason for the real wall was made more evident when the real goat
was tied