me with one gown--a combination of sapphire-blue velvet and
Pompadour brocade that came within an ace of making me look handsome,
like the rest.

He remarked upon its effect, and I told him I felt compelled to look
well, since I had nothing else to do; but the day had gone by when such
remarks could anger him. He laughed good-humoredly and said: "All the
same, Miss, that scene at the organ is mighty pretty and taking, too."

For, look you, in the theatre "a little knowledge is not a dangerous
thing." Complete knowledge is, of course, preferable; but, ah, how far a
very little will go, and here was my poor tum-tumming, "one _and_ two
_and_ three _and_," filling Mr. Daly's very soul with joy, because
forsooth, in a lovely old English interior, all draped in Christmas
greens, filled with carved-wood furniture, big logs burning in an
enormous fireplace, wax candles in brass sconces, two girls are at the
organ in dinner dress, who, nervously anxious about a New Year carol,
with which they are going to surprise their guests at mid-night, seize
the moment before dinner to try said carol over.

Miss Davenport, regal in satin, stood, music in hand, the fire-light on
her handsome face. I, seated at the organ in my precious blue and
brocade, played the accompaniment, and sang alto, and, though terror over
this simple bit of work brought me to the verge of nervous prostration,
the scene was, from the front, like a stolen peep into some beautiful
private home, and it brought an astonishing amount of applause. But if I
had not "_one_ two threed" in Cincinnati on that grinning old piano,
where would the organ-scene have been? Ah, a little knowledge, if spread
ever so thin by a master hand like Mr. Daly's, will prove useful.

So don't refuse to learn a little because you fear you cannot afford to
study thoroughly--if you are an actress.

While I was sitting through a long wait that day I fell into a brown
study. The theatre dresser, who was very fond of me and gave me every
spare moment of her time, came into my room and twice addressed me before
I came out of my reverie.

"What in the world are you thinking of, Miss Clara?" she asked, and I
answered with another question: "Mary, were you ever in a great fire?"

"No," she said; "were you?"

"Yes," I answered; "I have been twice burned out from shelter at dead of
night," and I told her of that hotel fire at 3 A.M., where there was but
one stairway to the street; of the mad bruta