hus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for
only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.

Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production
of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was
then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which
was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes.
When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type
of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up
Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.

Monotony the Bane of the Footlights.

And yet the outcome would seem to prove that she was only a shrewd woman
of good common sense, after all. Her managers followed "The Eternal City"
with Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son," and lost mighty sums upon it.

It is interesting to recall that before Miss Allen finally decided on "The
Christian" with which to inaugurate her stellar career she was minded to
use a version of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish". She is very
bookishly inclined, and has said that there are two things she prefers to
acting--to be an author or to serve as a trained nurse.

Nine years ago, when she was at the height of her success at the Empire,
she was asked by a certain paper to state what in her opinion was the one
drawback to the full enjoyment of life on the stage, and her prompt answer
was "Monotony, the deadly routine engendered by the long run."

WILSON CAME WITH CLOGS.

Comedian Might Have Gone in for Tragedy
Had the Wind Not Blown His
Credentials Into a River.

According to a story current some years since, which may or may not be a
press-agent yarn, the only reason Francis Wilson is not a tragedian is
because a gust of wind blew into the Schuylkill his letter of introduction
to the late E.L. Davenport. Like Hopper, Wilson is a native of
Philadelphia, where he was born in 1854. The nimbleness of his legs sent
him to the stage, where he began as a clog-dancer with a minstrel troupe
in the farce, "The Virginia Mummy."

It was during this engagement that he conceived the ambition for the
legitimate and obtained from his manager the letter to Davenport, which
blew out of his hand as he was reading it on a bridge in Fairmount Park.
He claims he hadn't the courage to ask for another one, but struck out for
better things later on in a diffe