Then there are the indispensable, but not easily procured, ‘ladies of the ballet.’ They number about five dozen; two dozen principals, the rest in training to become so. Their salary is not so low as is generally supposed--twenty-five, and occasionally thirty shillings a week. They are ‘respectable.’ I have seen three or four dozen of them together in their green-room, where they conducted themselves as ‘properly’ as any number of well-trained young ladies could at the most fashionable of finishing establishments. There was a scene in the ‘Sergeant’s Wife’ which was always played with a terrible power by Miss Kelly; and yet the audience, during the most exciting portion of the scene, saw only the back of the actress. Miss Kelly represented the wife, who, footsore and ignorant of her way, had found rude hospitality and rough sleeping quarters in a wretched hut. Unable to sleep, something tempts her to look through the interstices of the planks which divide her room from the adjoining one. While looking, she is witness of the commission of a murder. Spell-bound, she gazes on, in terror almost mute, save a few broken words. During this incident the actress had her back turned to the audience; nevertheless, she conveyed to the enthralled house an expression of overwhelming and indescribable horror as faithfully as if they had seen it in her features or heard it in her voice. Every spectator confessed her irresistible power, but none could even guess at the secret by which she exercised it. The mystery was, in fact, none at all. Miss Kelly’s acting in this scene was wonderfully impressive, simply because she kept strictly to nature. She knew that not to the face alone belongs all power of interpretation of passion or feeling. This knowledge gave to Rich his marvellous power as Harlequin. In the old days, when harlequinades had an intelligible plot in which the spectators took interest, it was the office of Harlequin to guard the glittering lady of his love from the malice of their respective enemies. There always occurred an incident in which Columbine was carried off from her despairing lord, and it was on this occasion that Rich, all power of conveying facial expression being cut off by his mask, used to move the house to sympathy, and sometimes, it is said, to tears, by the pathos of his mute and tragic action. As he gazed up the stage at the forced departure of Columbine every limb told unmistakably that the poor fellow’s heart was breaking within him. When she was restored the whole house broke forth into a thunder of exultation, as if the whole scene had been a reality. I cannot tell how this was effected, but I _can_ tell a story that is not unconnected with the terrible pantomime of suffering nature.