Now the property-man is consulted. The rocks that will lie about the stage in the diamond-field scene, the cataract in the background, the implements of the miners, the tents and the wagons, the furniture in the library scene and all the appurtenances of the conservatory, are to be made or procured by him and disposed of on the stage before the performance begins. The rocks are to be of papier-mâché, and the cataract is to be simulated by a revolving drum of tinsel or glass beads with a strong light upon it. It is his business to construct them and the artist's to paint them. Every article used on the stage is in the property-man's charge. The crowns of kings, the cross of Richelieu, the whip of Tony Lumpkin, the bleached forehead of Yorick, the bell which the victorious hero strikes before having the discomfited villain shown to the door, and the fat purse with its crackling bank-notes and jingling coin which the honest but virtuous clerk refuses in the face of temptation,--all belong to the property-man's department. The demands on his ingenuity and research take him into every kind of shop in every quarter of the city. He has dealings with ironmongers, milliners, upholsterers and merchants of curios. The magnificent and costly suite of carved oak in the library--scene, which is not veneer but substantial furniture, and the most trivial objects--a handbag or a hat-rack, perhaps a baby for some "side-splitting" farce, whatever the play calls for--he must secure and put, night after night, in the exact place which the stage-directions have prescribed. Each new play requires, of course, some new articles, and the accumulated stock is uniquely various from which the accoutrements of princes and potentates, beggars and nobles, soldiers and lackeys, priests and highwaymen, the riotously anachronistic material of a fancy-dress ball, may be gathered.