iven for going there professionally to write up the show for our
amusement column.

The programme was quite varied. Negro minstrelsy, sleight-of-hand, opera
bouffe, high tragedy, and that oriental style of quadrille called the
khan-khan, if my sluggish memory be not at fault, formed the principal
attractions of the evening.

At about 10:30 or 11 o'clock the khan-khan was produced upon the stage.
In the midst of it a tall man rose up at the back of the hall, and came
firmly down the aisle with a large, earnest revolver in his right hand.
He was a powerfully built man, with a dyed mustache and wicked eye on
each side of his thin, red nose. He threw up the revolver with a little
click that sounded very loud to me, for he had stopped right behind me
and rested his left hand on my shoulder as he gazed over on the stage. I
could distinctly hear his breath come and go, for it was a very loud
breath, with the odor of onions and emigrant whisky upon it.

The orchestra paused in the middle of a snort, and the man whose duty it
was to swallow the clarionet pulled seven or eight inches of the
instrument out of his face and looked wildly around. The gentleman who
had been agitating the feelings of the bass viol laid it down on the
side, crawled in behind it, and spread a sheet of music over his head.

The stage manager came forward to the footlights and inquired what was
wanted. The tall man with the self-cocking credentials answered simply:

"By Dashety Blank to Blank Blank and back again, I want my wife!"

The manager stepped back into the wings for a moment, and when he came
forward he also had a large musical instrument such as Mr. Remington
used to make before he went into the type-writer business. I can still
remember how large the hole in the barrel looked to me, and how I wished
that I had gone to the meeting of the Literary club that evening, as I
had at first intended to do.

Literature was really more in my line than the drama. I still thought
that it was not too late, perhaps, and so I rose and went out quietly so
as not to disturb any one, and as I went down the aisle the tall man and
stage manager exchanged regrets.

I looked back in time to see the tall man fall in the aisles with his
face in the sawdust and his hand over his breast. Then I went out of the
theatre in an aimless sort of way, taking a northeasterly direction as
the crow flies. I do not think I ran over a mile or two in this way
before I discover