your company, for a brief space, in a small and not ill-furnished
chamber, which, deep in the recesses of back scenes, dressing-rooms,
scaffolding, and machinery, is significantly entitled, by a painted
inscription, "Manager's Room." Though the theatre is a London one,
the house is small. It is one of those West-End speculations which are
occasionally graced by a company of French comedians, a monologist, or
a conjurer. There is all the usual splendor before the curtain, and all
the customary squalor behind. At the present moment--for it is growing
duskish of a November day, and rehearsal is just over--the general
aspect of the place is dreary enough. The box fronts and the lustre
are cased in brown holland, and, though the curtain is up, the
stage presents nothing but a chaotic mass of disjointed scenery and
properties. Tables, chairs, musical instruments, the half of a boat,
a throne, and a guillotine lie littered about, amidst which a ragged
supernumerary wanders, broom in hand, but apparently hopeless of where
or how to begin to reduce the confusion to order.

The manager's room is somewhat more habitable, for there is a good
carpet, warm curtains, and an excellent fire, at which two gentlemen are
seated, whose jocund tones and pleasant faces are certainly, so far as
outward signs go, fair guarantees that the world is not dealing very
hardly with them, nor they themselves much disgusted with the same
world. One of these--the elder, a middle-aged man somewhat inclined to
corpulency, with a florid cheek, and clear, dark eye--is the celebrated
Mr. Hyman Stocmar; celebrated, I say, for who can take up the morning
papers without reading his name and knowing his whereabouts; as thus:
"We are happy to be able to inform our readers that Mr. Stocmar is
perfectly satisfied with his after season at the 'Regent's.' Whatever
other managers may say, Mr. Stocmar can make no complaint of courtly
indifference. Her Majesty has four times within the last month graced
his theatre with her presence. Mr. Stocmar is at Madrid, at Vienna,
at Naples. Mr. Stocmar is in treaty with Signor Urlaccio of Turin, or
Mademoiselle Voltarina of Venice. He has engaged the Lapland voyagers,
sledge-dogs and all, the Choctaw chiefs, or the Californian lecturer,
Boreham, for the coming winter. Let none complain of London in November
so long as Mr. Hyman Stocmar caters for the public taste;" and so on.
To look at Stocmar's bright complexion, his ruddy glow,