when we had assumed their exact attitude, singing "Two
wandering boys from Switzerland."

I am reminded that the first performance I ever saw in my life had one
of the most grotesque interruptions imaginable. At a sort of country
hotel much frequented by driving parties and sleighing parties, a
company of players were "strapped,"--to use the theatrical term,
stranded,--unable either to pay their bills or to move on. There was a
ballroom in the house, and the proprietor allowed them to erect a
temporary stage there and give a performance, the guests in the house
promising to attend in a body.

One of the plays was an old French farce, known to English audiences as
"The Hole in the Wall." The principal comedy part was a clerk to two
old misers, who starved him outrageously.

I was a little, stiffly starched person, and I remember that I sat on
some one's silk lap, and slipped and slipped, and was hitched up and
immediately slipped again until I wished I might fall off and be done
with it. Near me sat a little old maiden lady, who had come in from her
village shop to see "the show." She wore two small, sausage curls either
side of her wrinkled cheeks, large glasses, a broad lace collar, while
three members of her departed family gathered together in one fell group
on a mighty pin upon her tired chest. She held a small bag on her knee,
and from it she now and then slid a bit of cake which, as she nibbled
it, gave off a strong odour of caraway seed.

[Illustration: _John E. Owens_]

Now the actor was clever in his "make-up," and each time he appeared he
looked thinner than he had in the scene before. Instead of laughing,
however, the old woman took it seriously, and she had to wipe her
glasses with her carefully folded handkerchief several times before
that last scene, when she was quite overcome.

His catch phrase had been, "Oh! oh! how hungry I am!" and every time he
said it, she gave a little involuntary groan; but as he staggered on at
the last, thin as a bit of thread paper, hollow-cheeked, white-faced,
she indignantly exclaimed, "Well now, _that's_ a shame!"

The people laughed aloud; the comedian fixed his eyes upon her face, and
with hands pressed against his stomach groaned, "O-h! how hungry I am!"
and then she opened that bag and drew forth two long, twisted, fried
cakes, rose, stood on her tip-toes, and reaching them up to him
tearfully remarked:--

"Here, you poor soul, take these. They are awful dry; b