rn at Portsmouth, N. H., in 1836. When quite young his family moved to
Louisiana, but he was sent back to New England to be educated, and later
he located at New York. He is a well-known writer of both prose and
poetry.

1. "Now, boys, what shall we do?" I asked, addressing a thoughtful
conclave of seven, assembled in our barn one dismal, rainy afternoon.
"Let's have a theater," suggested Binny Wallace.

2. The very thing! But where? The loft of the stable was ready to burst
with hay provided for Gypsy, but the long room over the carriage house was
unoccupied. The place of all places! My managerial eye saw at a glance its
capabilities for a theater.

3. I had been to the play a great many times in New Orleans, and was wise
in matters pertaining to the drama. So here, in due time, was set up some
extraordinary scenery of my own painting. The curtain, I recollect, though
it worked smoothly enough on other occasions, invariably hitched during
the performances.

4. The theater, however, was a success, as far as it went. I retired from
the business with no fewer than fifteen hundred pins, after deducting the
headless, the pointless, and the crooked pins with which our doorkeeper
frequently got "stuck." From first to last we took in a great deal of this
counterfeit money. The price of admission to the "Rivermouth Theater" was
twenty pins. I played all the principal characters myself--not that I was
a finer actor than the other boys, but because I owned the establishment.

5. At the tenth representation, my dramatic career was brought to a close
by an unfortunate circumstance. We were playing the drama of "William
Tell, the Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of
Fred Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let
him, so he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had.

6. I made a crossbow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well
without him. We had reached that exciting scene where Gesler, the Austrian
tyrant, commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper
Whitcomb, who played all the juvenile and women parts, was my son.

7. To guard against mischance, a piece of pasteboard was fastened by a
handkerchief over the upper portion of Whitcomb's face, while the arrow to
be used was sewed up in a strip of flannel. I was a capital marksman, and
the big apple, only two yards distant, turned its russet cheek fairly
towards me.

8. I can see po