The audiences attracted by such trial performances are the most singular imaginable in composition, and of a temper the most difficult--with the possible exceptions of a London first-night house bent on booing whatever the merits of the offering, and a body of jaded New York dramatic critics and apathetic theatre loungers assembled for the fourth consecutive first-night of a week toward the end of a long, hard winter. On Tuesday afternoons and nights (as a rule) they foregather in the "combination houses" of New York, animated (save for a sprinkling of agents and bored managers) by a single motive, the desire to laugh--preferably at, but at a pinch with, those attempting to win their approbation. Their sense of humour has been nourished on the sidewalk banana-peel, the slap-stick and the patch on the southern exposure of the tramp's trousers; and while they will accept with the silence of curiosity, if not of respect, and at times even applaud, straight "legitimate" acting, the slightest slip or evidence of hesitation on the part of an actor, the faintest suggestion of bathos in a line, or even the tardy adjustment of one of the wings after the rise of the curtain, will be hailed with shrieks of delight and derision. Before an assemblage of this character, "The Distinguished Romantic Actor, Chas. H. Quard & Company," presented "The Lie" as the fifth number of a matinée bill. Waiting in the wings and watching the stage-hands shift and manoeuvre flats and ceiling, and arrange furniture and properties at the direction of the _David_ (who doubled that rôle with the duties of stage manager) Joan listened to the dreadful wails of a voiceless vocalist who, on the other side of the scene-drop, was rendering with sublime disregard for key and tempo a ballad of sickening sentimentality; heard the feet of the audience, stamping in time, drown out both song and accompaniment, the subsequent roar of laughter and hand-clapping that signalized the retirement of the singer, and experienced, for the first and only time, premonitory symptoms of stage-fright. Through what seemed a wait of several minutes after the disappearance of the despised singer--who, half-reeling, half-running, with tears furrowing her enameled cheeks, brushed past Joan on her way to her dressing-room--the applause continued, rising, falling, dying out and reviving in vain attempts to lure the object of its ridicule back to the footlights.