Men, women and children from the Atlantic Seaboard and the Pacific Coast came to this “phantom” village, once the miners’ capital. Daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons of pioneers who once made those same walls vibrate with their applause were there for the gala opening of the revival, in dress such as their ancestors wore at the theatre when it was new. Some of the gowns, handed down through the fifty years, were once heard to rustle down those same aisles. Every person in the audience represented some famous character of the time when Central City was the centre of Colorado’s gold mining industry. “Camille” typified to perfection the taste of the ’80s in the theatre. Miss Lillian Gish, as Marguerite Gautier, takes the leading rôle, with Raymond Hackett playing opposite her as Armand. It was the first time “Camille” has played in the old opera house in fifty years. VIII L’ENVOI And so, at last, the plowman, turning the furrows of life, comes to the boundary that divides the known from the unknown—the wilderness from the sown field. Whatever we may one day find beyond, is already there in every detail—only, I lack the clairvoyant gift, and turn for a brief backward glimpse. It is no vision of artistic triumph that comes to me tonight ... not the memory of Chekhov’s radiant heroine ... not the triste picture of that broken flower of the Limehouse ... something even more real than these: a real child, trouping with wandering players, away from a mother’s care ... a slim-legged little girl, who slept on station benches and telegraph tables, who running across a foot-bridge lost her poor possessions in the swift black water, who from a train or hotel window stared silently into the night. “What are you looking at, Lillian?” “Nothing, Aunt Alice, just looking.” End of Project Gutenberg's Life and Lillian Gish, by Albert Bigelow Paine