t in
such utter darkness. Poor, guilty, unhappy John Wilkes Booth!

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH

Mr. R. E. J. Miles--His two Horses, and our Woful Experience with the
Substitute "Wild Horse of Tartary."

But there, just as I start to speak of my third season, I seem to look
into a pair of big, mild eyes that say: "Can it be that you mean to pass
me by? Do you forget that 'twas I who turned the great sensation scene of
a play into a side-splitting farce?" And I shake my head and answer,
truthfully: "I cannot forget, I shall never forget your work that night
in Columbus, when you appeared as the 'fiery, untamed steed' (may Heaven
forgive you) in 'Mazeppa.'"

Mr. Robert E. J. Miles, or "All the Alphabet Miles," as he was frequently
called, was starring at that time in the Horse Drama, doing such plays as
"The Cataract of the Ganges," "Mazeppa," "Sixteen-String Jack," etc.
"Mazeppa" was the favorite in Columbus, and both the star and manager
regretted they had billed the other plays in advance, as there would have
been more money in "Mazeppa" alone. Mr. Miles carried with him two
horses; the one for the "Wild Horse of Tartary" was an exquisitely
formed, satin-coated creature, who looked wickedly at you from the tail
of her blazing eye, who bared her teeth savagely, and struck out with her
fore-feet, as well as lashed out with the hind ones. When she came
rearing, plunging, biting, snapping, whirling, and kicking her way on to
the stage, the scarlet lining of her dilating nostrils and the foam
flying from her mouth made our screams very natural ones, and the women
in front used to huddle close to their companions, or even cover their
faces.

One creature only did this beautiful vixen love--R. E. J. Miles. She
fawned upon him like a dog; she did tricks like a dog for him, but she
was a terror to the rest of mankind, and really it was a thrilling scene
when _Mazeppa_ was stripped and bound, his head tail-ward, his feet
mane-ward, to the back of that maddened beast. She seemed to bite and
tear at him, and when set free she stood straight up for a dreadful
moment, in which she really endangered his life, then, with a wild neigh,
she tore up the "runs," as if fiends pursued her, with the man stretched
helplessly along her inky back. The curtain used to go up again and
again--it was so very effective.

For a horse to get from the level stage clear above the "flies," under
the very roof, the platforms or runs he mounts on