[Illustration: NEIL BURGESS AS THE WIDOW BEDOTT. Drawn by Arthur Jule Goodman, after a photograph by Falk.--From the collection of Evert Jansen Wendell.] SCENE V. THE LOCAL NEW YORK DRAMA. "Like boys unto a muss." _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act iii. Sc. 13. The number of plays based upon life in New York, all of which are strangely similar in title and in plot, or what must pass for plot, and all of which have been seen upon the New York stage since the first appearance of _Mose_, will surprise even those most familiar with our theatrical literature. Taken almost at random from various files of old play-bills, and from Mr. Ireland's _Records_, there were _A Glance at New York;_ or _New York in 1848_; _New York As it Is_; _First of May in New York_; _The Mysteries and Miseries of New York_; _Burton's New York Directory_; _The New York Fireman_; _Fast Young Men of New York_; _Young New York_; _The Poor of New York_; _New York by Gaslight_; _New York in Slices_; _The Streets of New York_; _The New York Merchant and his Clerks_; _The Ship-carpenter of New York_; _The Seamstress of New York_; _The New York Printer_; _The Drygoods Clerk of New York_, and many more, including _Adelle, the New York Saleslady_, which last was seen on the Bowery side of the town as late as 1879. These were nearly all spectacular plays, and they were usually realistic to a degree in their representation of men and things in the lower walks of life. Rich merchants, lovely daughters, wealthy but designing villains, comic waiter-men, and pert chamber-maids with song and dance accompaniment, were placed in impossible uptown parlors; but the poor but honest printer set actual type from actual cases, and cruelly wronged but humble maidens met disinterested detectives by real lamp-posts and real ash-barrels, in front of what really looked like real saloons. [Illustration: F. S. CHANFRAU AS MOSE.]