While I was out, Captain ---- called for our letters. Saw Mr. ----, and bade him good-by: they are going away to-day to Havre, to Europe; I wish I was a nail in one of their trunks. After breakfast, went to rehearse King John: what a lovely mess they will make of it, to be sure! When my sorrows were ended, my father brought me home: found a most lovely nosegay from Mr. ---- awaiting me. Bless it! how sweet it smelt, and how pretty it looked. Spent an hour delightfully in putting it into water. Got things ready for to-night, practised till dinner, and wrote journal. My father received a letter to-day, informing him that a cabal was forming by the friends of Miss Vincent and Miss Clifton (native talent!) to hiss us off the New York stage, if possible; if not, to send people in every night to create a disturbance during our best scenes: the letter is anonymous, and therefore little deserving of attention. After dinner, practised till time to go to the theatre. The house was very full; but what a cast! what a play! what botchers! what butchers! In his very first scene, the most christian king stuck fast; and there he stood, shifting his truncheon from hand to hand, rolling his eyes, gasping for breath, and struggling for words, like a man in the night-mare. I thought of Hamlet--"Leave thy damnable faces"--and was obliged to turn away. In the scene before Angiers, when the French and English heralds summon the citizens to the walls, the Frenchman applied his instrument to his mouth, uplifted his chest, distended his cheeks, and appeared to blow furiously; not a sound! he dropped his arm, and looked off the stage in discomfiture and indignation, when the perverse trumpet set up a blast fit to waken the dead,--the audience roared: it reminded me of the harp in the old ballad, that "began to play alone." Chatillon, on his return from England, begged to assure us that with King John was come the mother queen, an _Anty_ stirring him to blood and war. When Cardinal Pandulph came on, the people set up a shout, as usual: he was dreadfully terrified, poor thing; and all the time he spoke kept giving little nervous twitches to his sacred petticoat, in a fashion that was enough to make one die of laughter. He was as obstinate, too, in his bewilderment as a stuttering man in his incoherency; for once, when he stuck fast, having twitched his skirts, and thumped his breast in vain for some time, I thought it best, having to speak next, to go on; when, lo and behold! in the middle of my speech, the "scarlet sin" recovers his memory, and shouts forth the end of his own, to the utter confusion of my august self and the audience. I thought they never would have got through my last scene: king gazed at cardinal, and cardinal gazed at king; king nodded and winked at the prompter, spread out his hands, and remained with his mouth open: cardinal nodded and winked at the prompter, crossed his hands on his