The principal actor, whose name I forget, was the oddest and hungriest looking player I ever saw stalk across a stage, or foam and fret in histrionic effort. He looked as though he had been dangling from the lowest spoke of Fortune’s wheel for the last twenty years. His make-up was terrible also, and after I learned the performance was not an intentional burlesque, I could hardly keep from hooting whenever he appeared. As the evening advanced, however, he warmed up considerably. When he appeared as the murderous Thane moving toward the apartments of his slumbering victim, huskily repeating the thrilling lines, “The bell invites me! I go, and it is done!” he looked every inch a villain, and the little theatre rung again with the clapping and clattering of the enthusiastic audience. In “Othello” his dress was even worse than in “Macbeth.” In the scene where he smothers Desdemona, he was barefooted, and looked supremely ridiculous. I would have given double the amount I paid for admission for the glorious privilege of kicking him across the stage. [Illustration: OTHELLO.] The customary pitcher-shaped lamp which the “Moor” usually bears in his hand upon this occasion, and to which he alludes when he says:— “If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me,” was not procurable. The tragedian therefore carried a candle stuck in the neck of a large wine-bottle, and under his left arm he carried a pillow about the size of a single-bed mattress, with which to put out the light of the fair Desdemona, who was lying upon a lounge at the left of the stage. I was too great a lover of Shakespeare to sit longer by and witness the terrible butchery. I arose and left the house, and as I passed out, the pitying glances of the audience informed me that they didn’t understand the real state of affairs, but thought I was taken suddenly ill. I was ill at ease, and had been, during the entire evening. On the way down the next morning an over land passenger made my acquaintance on the cars, and while conversing about the long snow sheds and tunnels he had passed, I informed him of the long tunnel through which we would pass on leaving the valley. “Are we near that tunnel now?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, “we will enter it in about fifteen minutes.” “Is the tunnel dark?” he inquired. “Yes, very dark,” I replied, “ten shades darker than a cloudy midnight.” “By jingo!” he cried, “that’s just the thing for me. I forgot to put on a clean shirt last night, and I hate like the deuce to arrive at my destination looking as I do now. Do you think a fellow would have time to put a shirt on while passing through it?” he continued, earnestly. “He might,” I answered, “if he had it ready before reaching the tunnel.”