to milk-white ponies and harnessed
themselves to this Cinderella coach, neither Charley nor Talbot would
have considered it an unusual circumstance.

The pantomime which is usually played at the Boston Theatre during the
holidays is to them positive proof that the stories of Cinderella
and Jack of the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant-Killer have historical
solidity. They like to be reassured on that point. So one morning last
January, when I informed Charley and Talbot, at the breakfast-table,
that Prince Rupert and his court had come to town,

"Some in jags,
Some in rags,
And some in velvet gown,"

the news was received with great satisfaction; for this meant that we
were to go to the play.

For the sake of the small folk, who could not visit him at night, Prince
Rupert was gracious enough to appear every Saturday afternoon during the
month. We decided to wait upon his Highness at one of his _matinees_.

You would never have dreamed that the sun was shining brightly
outside, if you had been with us in the theatre that afternoon. All the
window-shutters were closed, and the great glass chandelier hanging from
the gayly painted dome was one blaze of light.

But brighter even than the jets of gas were the ruddy, eager faces of
countless boys and girls, fringing the balconies and crowded into the
seats below, longing for the play to begin. And nowhere were there two
merrier or more eager faces than those of Charley and Talbot, pecking
now and then at a brown paper cone filled with white grapes, which I
held, and waiting for the solemn green curtain to roll up, and disclose
the coral realm of the Naiad Queen.

I shall touch very lightly on the literary aspects of the play. Its
plot, like that of the modern novel, was of so subtile a nature as not
to be visible to the naked eye. I doubt if the dramatist himself could
have explained it, even if he had been so condescending as to attempt to
do so. There was a bold young prince--Prince Rupert, of course--who
went into Wonderland in search of adventures. He reached Wonderland by
leaping from the castle of Drachenfels into the Rhine. Then there was
one Snaps, the prince's valet, who did not in the least want to go, but
went, and got terribly frightened by the Green Demons of the Chrysolite
Cavern, which made us all laugh--it being such a pleasant thing to see
somebody else scared nearly to death. Then there were knights in brave
tin armor, and armies