tightening the strings of her bonnet, and watching the performance of Miss Misham the dancer, who in a gray cotton gown was dismally practising a new step without music, in a distant corner of the stage.

Mrs. Tott having found her Angelina, was suddenly addressed in an indistinct whisper from one of the wings by Mr. Chatt, the villain of the piece, who hadn't got his part up yet, and who consequently spoke it in a subdued tone. This gentleman invoked fragmentary anathemas on the heads of sundry individuals who it seems interfered with his getting possession of the person of long lost Angelina. To him succeeded the light lover, in the person of Mr. Donis, who was considered remarkably handsome, and always knew his part perfectly. His glibness was indeed so remarkable and the words came out in such a continual stream of jabber, and slid one into the other in such an extraordinary manner, remaining one conglomerate as it were until the last word, which being the cue was pronounced so distinctly and separate that Mynus was perfectly astounded.

And so the play went on, interrupted every three minutes by some dispute between the prompter and the actors, or furious demands on the part of the manager for certain properties, indispensable to the scene, which were not forthcoming. One gentleman in particular, a fat man who played pathetic fathers, occasioned much confusion by never being ready when called for, and when he did come, wiping beer-froth off his lips, indignantly and brazenly protesting that he had been there all the time.

All this was very new and strange to Mynus. He could hardly believe that this was a theatre. That these ill-dressed, quarrelsome, vulgar people were the same that of an evening strode majestically before the public with glittering dresses on their backs and choicest language on their lips. That those blotchy canvas screens, daubed with green and yellow spots, could ever become the fairy-like forest beneath whose shade heroes and heroines rested from the glare of a gas-light day. And the manager, too, that august and mysterious personage whom he had pictured as a sort of wondrous enchanter, at whose word, plays, scenery and actors sprang into instant existence without trouble or thought; here he was slaving and swearing and perspiring like any other mortal who had to work hard for his living. Mynus therefore did not experience so great a feeling of awe as he

had anticipated, when he was introduced by Isaacs to Mr. Tiddles. He actually summoned up courage to propose to that high and mighty personage, the production of a drama, of his, Mynus's composition, which proposition the manager at first pooh-poohed, then listened to, and finally intimated that perhaps if the play was good and suited to his companythat in particular-he might be induced to undertake it.

"Now Isaacs," said Mynus, as they returned home by a side street-Mynus having effected this by declaring that the noise in Broadway affected his head, "now Isaacs, the current of my destiny is on the turn. It has been ebb-tide a long while with me, Isaacs, but it's going to be flood now. My fortune's bark is returning into port, laden with a freight of happiness, with the flag of triumph flying at her helm. But" continued he, suddenly forsaking the maritime imagery in which he had been indulging, "won't I crush those infernal publishers when I get rich! I'll be hanged, Isaacs, if I don't publish all my books myself. Won't that cut them up?"

Isaacs thought the contingency highly probable.

"Then," continued Mynus, as his imagination warmed, "I'll establish an author's college, where literary men can live for nothing while they are writing their books, and be no longer dependent on brutal Magazine editors for their support. Nothing, sir, is so degrading to the true literary man as to be obliged to work for money. It fetters his intellect, sir,

and cramps his imagination. If I was rich. I'd show the world what writing was and reduce publishers to their proper level."

"I wish you was rich, sir," responded Isaacs, "because then you could pay me that little bill that-"

"Infamous man!" shrieked Mynus, "did you not induce me to accept this degrading office under promise of never mentioning that odious account? Am I to regard you, Isaacs, as a promise breaker, or a man of your word?"

"Don't fret yourself about it, Mr. Mynus. I wasn't asking you for it just now, you know, only if ever you was to get rich I thought"

"No more, no more of this," said Mynus impatiently, "I feel faint and weary, let us take a drink."

Isaacs hesitated for a moment. He knew who would have to pay for the drinks, and his Jewish spirit rose up against such liberality; but he was thirsty.

The bar-room was invitingly near-'twas only a shilling-so he led the way.

CHAPTER V.

THE POLAR MAIDEN.

MrNUs had scarcely reached his home before he commenced his drama. It was determined that Bella should privately rehearse her part, and when all was finished be introduced to the manager at the same time as the piece. There was an old retired actress who lived in a garret in Elizabeth street, whose services were called into requisition as instructress to the aspirant, and after a few trials of her voice and delivery, this sexagenarian lady declared that Bella possessed immense dramatic ability. So while Mynus wrote, and altered, and cogitated, Bella with her tutor practised rising and falling inflections-starts of surprise and horror-exclamations of anger and grief-effective entrances and graceful exits-in short, all those artificial points which actors study so intently, and which render the stage what it is--the most unnatural of all the mockeries of nature.

The play and Bella were finished. The former, as Mynus himself said, had transcended all his former efforts, and would, doubtless, enwreathe his temples with unfading glory. He had as the play progressed been obliged to alter his original title, and its outer cover now presented these words, engrossed in a bad but elaborate imitation of German text.

THE MAIDEN OF THE POLAR SEAS,
A DRAMA

IN THREE ACTS,

BY

BELISARIUS MYNUS.

Mynus was a proud man as the finishing stroke was put to those seventy odd leaves of manuscript. He read it to Bella, and Bella read it to him, until the text of her part (the Maiden) grew so familiar to her that she used it in private conversation. He read it to old Isaacs, nay, even repeated it to him as he went along the streets with him, bag in hand. He read it to Mrs. Isaacs, while that lady made toast on the point of a Highland claymore, which weapon, since Scotch dramas had gone out of fashion, was no longer useful as a property. He read it to Mrs. Gunch, the decayed actress who had taught Bella, and once or twice the wild idea crossed his mind of reading it to one or two of his most obdurate creditors, in the hope that such a display of genius

would entirely soften their hearts, and enable him to promenade Broadway once more in peace. But the suggestion, although brilliant, seemed vain, and he still stole down the side streets, and watched the corners as of old.

The Rubicon was passed. The play was read to the manager, Bella was exhibited to him in her character of the Maiden, and that autocratic functionary had absolutely declared his intention of bringing them both out. It is needless to say with what joy Mynus beheld on a yellow placard one morning a line at the bottom of the announcement of the evening's entertainments at the Mulberry Theatre, stating that "a new and original drama. written expressly for this theatre, with new scenery, dresses and effects, was in preparation and would be shortly produced." Even the costumier warmed into enthusiasm as he saw this, and said to Mynus, feelingly, with the tears rolling down his puffy Jewish cheeks, "I tell you what, Mr. Mynus," said he, "it will be a great day for me when I see that girl there come out as an actress on her own hook. I never thought, sir, when I picked her up one night a crying like any thing in the street, with nothing on her but a little thin silk dress and that big brooch there, that she'd come to any thing half so good. And when I brought her home to Mrs. Isaacs, and when I advertised for a month, sir, for her parents, and when no one came to look after her, didn't I get a rubbing down from the old woman for my humanity. But it's all for the best, sir, and an approving conscience is excellent interest upon one's capital;" and Mr. Isaacs, quite overcome with the recollection of his own benevolence, and the domestic sufferings he encountered, on account of it, wept plentifully into a dinen pocket-handkerchief which had once been part of the vestments of a Priestess of the Sun.

As for Bella, she was wild with delight. Her daily journeys to rehearsal were to her travels into Fairyland. The ability which she so strikingly displayed in even her crudest performances struck the manager with wonder; and as she was quite shrewd enough to understand her own value, her spirits rose in proportion as she gained confidence in herself. She and Mynus had great times of it-he sitting on the gloomy stage, seeing her perform his creation of the Maiden. And when she came to the scene where the iceberg turns over, with the Maiden clinging to its slippery surface, and he saw the wild look of hopeless agony which those large

dark eyes of hers cast up to heaven, as she went through the stage business on a large barrel that represented the iceberg in preparatory rehearsals, he could not help feeling that this young girl was destined to achieve a brilliant success, in which he too should share. Then they would talk gravely over their prospects, and had already settled that they were to marry within the year-Bella assenting calmly to all arrangements, and Mynus building all sorts of extravagant hopes, and every day tumbling more and more into love.

Well, the eventful night came. All over the town great placards blazed with huge announcements of the new drama. Mynus, fevered and anxious, stole out through the streets, and was never tired of reading them. He stopped at every corner and read the large announcements, and went into every bar-room and perused the small bills with the same fresh and unvarying interest. He hovered about the Theatre. There it was a busy time. The scene painter was putting in his last touches to his great scene. The manager was showing the carpenters the order in which each scene should come, and teaching the actors their attitudes and positions in the grand tableaux, with which the acts terminated; attending, in fact, to every bodies' business, bullying here, cajoling there; instructing every where, and every now and then hauled up by some cantankerous actor, who fancied his part did not suit him, and who revenged himself by giving all the trouble he could. Mynus was much annoyed by the want of respect he met with. People did not seem to recollect that he was the great author who had called into existence the piece on which they were at present engaged; carpenters told him roughly to get out of the way; the manager would not listen to him, the scene painter snubbed him, even Bella herself told him not to bother her, when he expressed his conviction that she was playing the wreck scene beautifully. He had nothing left but to wander away wretchedly, dropping in occasionally at the box-office to see how the house stood for the night, varying this amusement by watching the people reading the bills at the doors, and wondering what they thought about the new piece, and what they would think if they knew that the author was looking at them. He also speculated much about his dress. He would be called on to appear after the end of the play, and debated earnestly whether it would be better to come before the curtain, or bow from a

private box. The latter he esteemed the preferable course on two accounts. First, it was more dignified. Secondly, he could manage, with Isaacs' assistance, to get up a tolerable bust-that is to say, he could, out of the properties in that gentleman's possession, command a decent evening coat and waistcoat. But in trousers and boots the worthy Jew was limited, and those portions of Mynus's own attire were quite impracticable. By skilful management in a private box, however, he could present an elaborate bust to the public, effectually concealing any deficiencies which might otherwise be observable in his own lower extremities. And so the time passed in fevered and anxious thought until the hour for performance.

The house was full, for it was Saturday night, and in parquette and dress circle might be seen a plentiful sprinkling of black eyes and heavy lips, for of all people the Jews retain the strongest love of spectacle, and on their Sabbath the theatrical treasuries are the better for them. To-night unusual attractions drew together an unusually large audience. A new piece and a new actress are seldom brought the same evening on the boards; and by the time that the orchestra had struck up the Copenhagen Waltz, which it played six nights in the week in the theatre, and on Sundays at a German concert, there was not a vacant seat in the house.

Mynus alternated between the manager's box and behind the scenes. From the former he watched anxiously the expression of the audience, hoping to discern if they were in good humor, while behind the scenes he went from actor to actor, earnestly entreating them not to forget certain points which he had impressed upon their memory, and on which the fate of the play absolutely depended. Bella he scarcely dared speak, she looked so splendid in her costume as the Maiden, which, intended as it was for a voyage in the Arctic regions, struck one as inappropriately slight; unless, indeed, a profusion of spangles and artificial flowers were sovereign against cold.

To

The bell rang, the orchestra raced through the last few bars they were playing, the curtain rose, the murmur of people settling themselves in their seats, filled the house, and the play began. Mynus fixed his eye on the theatrical critic of the New York Daily Cockchafer, who sat opposite. He would have given worlds to have been able to sit next that man, and flatter him for an hour and a half. But the play went on. Every now and

then as a new scene made its appearance there would roll down the house a salvo of applause, but as yet the drama itself did not come in for much. A faint laugh, drawn out by the funny man's putting his head through a pane of glass, and saying that it saved him a hairdresser, and a slight indication of hysterical affection on the part of a young Jewish lady in the boxes, when the villain was preparing to blow up the twenty-one decker, in which the heroine was about to sail, were all that as yet arrived to console Mynus. But he was patient. Bella, as the Maiden, had not appeared yet. The audience was waiting for her. When she came, then wouldn't it go?

The Maiden came. In the scene of "lurid devastation" (quotation from bills), with which the second act opened, she bounded on the stage, in her spangles and flowers and little satin shoes, and the huge brooch, containing the portrait of the elderly gentleman in a blue coat, with which she never parted, blazing on her bosom. She stopped, half panting as she entered, and turned toward the audience. She certainly looked lovely in that moment. Her face, pale but luminous as it were with the brightness of those glorious eyes of hers, turned half upwards with a sort of mingled fear and wonder. Her light, graceful figure poised on one small foot, and her hands crossed above her bosom, as if to still the beating of her heart, while one of those instinctive tributes which an audience sometimes pays almost involuntarily, greeted her after the first pause. From gallery, parquette, and dress circle, round after round followed, until the very house shook. This seemed to encourage her, for she rose to her full height, and her countenance relapsed once more into that careless, half-defiant expression she was accustomed to wear. Then the play went on. She threw astonishing power into the stilted and bombastic language assigned to her.

Her

whole frame seemed to quiver with emotion, and her action, though sudden and startling, as if the very burst of impulse, was graceful in the highest degree. The audience felt at once that the girl was one of those rare genuises that in dramatic annals stand out in bright relief against the hosts of stilted performers that the world has been forced to praise. simply because they had no better. Bella carried away the applause of the piece. All her points were marked with that appreciative murmur so dear to the artist. She was making a great success. But it appeared to Mynus that the play was not

going on very well. Every scene that Bella was not in passed unnoticed. The choice bits of the drama did not awake a single response from the audience. The funny man said funny things, and the villain communicated his black designs through a pair of black moustaches, in vain. The manager looked darkly at Mynus. Mynus looked at the critic of the Daily Cockchafer. That gentleman looked as solemn as the day of judgment. Unutterable condemnation seemed to hover on his frowning brow. Columns of terrible rebuke seemed to be quickening into life in that judicial brain. Mynus's heart began to sink a little, and he, by way of comforting himself, essayed a joke with the manager, who was blackening by degrees, like a thunder cloud, in the back of the box. The prompt manner in which that person suppressed his budding jocularity, deterred him from any further effort to keep up appearances, and he accordingly allowed himself to look as wretchedly as he felt.

It was now towards the close of the last act, and Mynus, who was staring vacantly into the stage box opposite, the only vacant one in the house, and wondering why it had not been taken, suddenly heard the door open, and by the waving of the curtains it was evident that a party had arrived. Mynus thought with just indignation that they need not have been so late.

Bella was not on the stage, she did not come on again till the very end of the last scene, where she saves her Esquimaux lover from the deadly grasp of a white bear, and the curtain falls on a wedding feast in a Greenland village. The play went on; the bear attacked the Esquimaux lover; Bella bounded in to the rescue. She had scarcely appeared when the curtains of the box that Mynus had been previously watching, became violently agitated, and he saw a large ivory lorgnette thrust eagerly forward, as if some one leaned over to get a better view. 'One or two profiles appeared too at the back of the box, anxiously watching the stage. Some great commotion was evidently occurring there. The play went on to its close. The struggle with the bear was over. Bella, with incredible presence of mind, had given it a fish bone to swallow, which, sticking in its throat, caused its immediate suffocation, and she now rested in the arms of her exhausted lover. The Esquimaux villagers flocked in, and formed the usual tableau; but as the curtain descended, a shrill cry was heard that echoed through the entire

house. The curtains of the stage box were drawn violently asunder, and an old gentleman appeared struggling in the hands of some friends who were apparently trying to prevent his leaping on the stage. While he struggled, he held out his hands towards Bella, opening and shutting them, as though he would grasp her, even at that distance. The audience, who thought this was merely an ebullition of some old enthusiast, began to laugh; but the moment the curtain fell, the gentleman who had caused all this excitement was drawn back into the box. The draperies closed and moved no more. Then arose a tremendous call for the Maiden, loud and long from the gallery, parquette, and boxes. But, strange to say, the Maiden did not come. The

uproar increased, and a few hisses began to be heard. Mynus grew impatient. No one called for the author, nor would they, he argued, until they had brought Bella before the curtain, so amid a perfect storm of raps and whistlings, he left the box and went behind the scenes.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CATASTROPHE-DRAMATIC AND UNEXPECTED.

"WHERE is Bella, Mr. Chatt?" said Mynus to that gentleman, whom he met drinking a pot of beer behind one of the flats. Where is Bella? the people are furious with her for not coming out."

"They'll have to wait, then," said Mr. Chatt, sullenly, who had received no applause during the evening, and, of course, blamed Mynus for it.

"But they won't wait, Mr. Chatt; they'll tear the house down."

"Pooh!" answered Chatt, contemptuously. "Haven't you heard?”

66

"Heard what? I've heard nothing except a most infernal row in the gallery. What the deuce do you mean?" Why it seems that some old gentleman in the boxes saw a brooch on Bella that he recognized, and he came rushing in here after the play was over, asking for his child, and the moment he saw Bella, he caught her in his arms, and after one or two questions, he whisked her off, dressed as she was, into a carriage, and that's all I know about it. But she's gone."

"Good God! but the name-did you learn his name?"

"Yes. Mr. Brandon. A very rich man, they say. Lives in the Fifth Avenue, and has carriages and all that. Bella's a lucky girl to have found such a

father. But I say won't Mrs. Gunch be glad now that the girl's gone? She was as jealous of her as a pile of bricks."

And with this appropriate simile, Mr. Chatt sauntered off to congratulate Mrs. Gunch.

Mynus seemed in a dream. Bella; his Bella, suddenly transformed into a young lady! why it was like a regular play. He recollected now the story of her having been picked up in the streets, with nothing definite about her but this very brooch, and with his brain in a whirl, he hurried back to his box, in order to present himself in case he was called on to appear. He found the manager in an evening suit before the curtain, holding his hat elegantly before him, while he was explaining in heart-rending tones of sorrow, how impossible it was for Bella to appear before them, owing to a sudden attack of illness. They'll ask for me, now," thought Mynus, and his heart beat at the suggestion. But they didn't. They took their hats and cloaks and bonnets, and poured out of the theatre. And the gaslights went out one by one, and the two old women commenced hanging the linen over the velvet and gilding of the boxes, and the theatre was nearly in darkness before Mynus could realize the fact that his play had been damned.

He met the manager as he was going out; and as a last hope asked when the play would be repeated.

Repeat that play, sir!" cried Tiddles in a voice of thunder. "Repeat such stuff as that! Catch me at it, that's all. Hang your play, Mr. Mynus. Hang it, I say. It cost me loads of money, and I daren't run it a second night. Then there's that girl. I might have made something of her. But she's carried off before my eyes. Hang the play, sir. It's been a misfortune to me.'

"Mr. Tiddles," said Mr. Mynus with dignity-"your language is loathsome. I will make you repent of it, sir, before long. I'll smash you, sir!" and he walked into the street. And Mynus did think that he would make Tiddies repent, and that he would smash him; for he was full at the moment of the wildest dreams.

Mynus did not sleep much that night. He absolutely felt no regret at the failure of his play. He had other views. Views of fabulous splendor. Bella had found by a singular chance, a rich father. Bella would be wealthy. Bella was in love with him. Bella would marry him. They would live in the Fifth Avenue, and patronize the Coliseum, which was the rival of Tiddles' theatre; and towards