at I
mean."

"Vot you mean? Dot I should sit in it so?" and the German actor
plumped himself into the chair in question by approaching it so that
he could sit on it in astride, in reverse position, folding his arms
over the rounded back.

"No--no, not that way--not as if you were riding a horse!" cried the
manager. "Throw yourself into it with abandon, as the stage
directions call for."

"Let me show him," broke in the melancholy voice of Wellington Bunn.

Striding into the scene, which had been interrupted to enable this
bit of rehearsal to be gone through with, the old Shakespearean actor
approached the chair and cast himself into it as though he had lost
his last friend, and had no hope left on earth.

"That's the way--that's the idea--copy that!" cried Mr. Pertell,
enthusiastically.

But he spoke too soon.

Mr. Bunn had cast himself into the chair with such "abandon" that the
chair abandoned him. It fell apart, it disintegrated, it parted
company with its legs--all at once--so that chair and actor came to
the ground in a heap.

"Oh, my! I am injured! A physician, I beseech you!" moaned Mr. Bunn,
while others of the cast rushed to help him to his feet. He was soon
pulled from the ruins of the chair.

"Ach! So. I unterstandt now!" exclaimed Mr. Switzer. "I haf your
meaning now, of vat 'abandon' is, Mr. Pertell. I am to break der
chair ven I sits on it, yes? Dot is 'abandon' a chair. Vot a queer
lanquitch der English is, alretty. Vell, brings me annuder chair und
I vill abandon it!"

Mr. Pertell threw his hands upwards in a despairing gesture.

"No--no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that way."

"Than vot you means?" asked the German, puzzled.

Meanwhile Wellington Bunn was painfully walking over to a more
substantial chair.

"That was all a trick!" he cried. "You did that on purpose, Mr.
Snooks. You provided a broken chair!"

"I did not!" protested the property man. "It was the way you threw
yourself into it. What did you think it was made of--iron?"

"I knew something would happen!" observed Mr. Sneed, gloomily. "I
felt it in my bones."

"Und I guess me dot he veels it in his bones, now," chuckled Mr.
Switzer. "I am glat dot I, myself, did not abandon dot chair alretty
yet."

The play went on after a little delay, and for some time after that
the Shakespearean actor was very chary of offering to show other
actors how to put "abandon" into their parts.

So far as could be told by an inspection o