evening in the Quarter. Then the soprano commenced singing, the
tenor took up the duet, and they opened the act by walking
rhythmically with the popular ballad air to stage-centre in the
amber of the spot-light. When the duet was finished, on came the
baritone, and then the contralto, and there was a little comedy
before they sang their first quartet number.

Then the first drop was lifted in darkness and the scene changed
to the interior of the squalid tenement in which the pathos of the
little story unfolded, and a characteristic song was sung. At
length the scene changed to the throne room of the palace, where
the plot resolved itself into happiness and the little opera closed
with the "Quartet from Rigoletto."

The act was a success; it never received less than five bows and
always took two encores. But we paid three hundred and fifty
dollars for those miracles of drops, my partners and I, and we
used them only one week.

In the first place, the drops were too big for the stage on which
we "tried out" the act. We could not use them there and played
before the house street-drop and in the house palace set. The act
went very well. We shipped the drops at length-rates--as all
scenery is charged for by expressmen and railroads--to the next
town. There we used them and the act went better. It was a
question whether the bigger success was due to the smoother working
of the act or to the beautiful drops.

The price for which the act was playing at that breaking-in period
led me to ponder the cost of transporting the drops in their