"Mr. Teal, whom afterward I came to know very well, and I have often laughed over that," said Miss Celeste. "But it was hard work in that stock company. We changed the bill twice a week, and sometimes now I think how often I have sat with a dress-maker on one side of me and my part in a chair near my elbow on the other side, memorizing my lines while I sewed away for dear life on my costumes." Miss Celeste steadily gained in skill as an actress, and was given characters of increasing importance. She went with the company to Portland; and when she announced that she was going to leave the organization and look for an opening in opera, she was offered the position of leading woman as an inducement to stay. After Miss Celeste returned to New York, she studied singing for a time, and then was engaged for the farce comedy, "Hoss and Hoss," which exploited Charles Reed, now dead, and Willie Collier, who is at present emulating the example of Nat Goodwin and trying to make himself over into a legitimate comedian. The company opened at the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston, on January 12, 1892, and Miss Celeste's character was Polly Hoss. It was not really a character though, only a name, and she was engaged not to act, but to sing. Everybody in the company thought that she was a beginner, and she did not tell her associates how she had barely escaped being leading lady of a two-bills-a-week stock-company. "Hoss and Hoss" was a typical farce comedy of the Charles H. Hoyt school,--a plotless, formless thing, which was no play, but a vehicle. The chief object of the person that conceived it was to get every person in the company on the stage at the same time, toward the end of the third act. When this remarkable artistic feat was accomplished, a leading personage in the cast would remark with elaborate casualness:-- "Seeing we're all here and looking so well, suppose we have a little music." Forthwith every one on the stage fell into the nearest chair in a helpless sort of a way, as if life were a veritable snare and delusion, and the master of ceremonies continued:-- "Miss Jones, will you kindly favor us with that beautiful ballad entitled 'Way Down upon the Swanee River?'" And so they began, and thus they continued, until every one on the stage had his chance to air his talent before a highly entertained assemblage. It was not exactly a minstrel show, but it approached the minstrel territory. On the bill it was called the "olio." Miss Celeste's part in the "olio" was to sing a ballad; and as no one knew anything about her, she was placed almost at the end of the list of entertainers. When she came to talk with Frank Palmer, the musical director of the company, he asked her what song she had chosen. She told him, and then he wanted to know what she was going to give as an encore.