On the morning appointed the company assemble in the green-room, sauntering in with unbusiness-like irregularity and addressing one another with that familiarity of which we have before spoken. There is a good deal of banter and some scolding. The author grasps each member of the company by the hand as they enter: he is pleading and ingratiating in his manner, and after some delay he sits at a small table and begins to read his manuscript, or if he is too nervous the manager or the assistant manager reads it, and he scans the faces of the actors with a touching desire to find some responsive thrill as his best points are reached and passed. A faint smile of the low comedian as a grotesque line is read, a murmur of the leading lady at some climacteric phrase of the heroine's, or an ejaculated measure of applause from the leading man over some strong emotion in the principal part, yields gladness to him--he foresees how much stronger they will be spoken in character with dramatic enunciation--and as the lines which he has thought effective fall unnoticed a gloomy apprehension possesses him. At the end of the reading there is an interchange of civilities, a private chat between the manager and the author, and the little green-room, which has the mildewed appearance of a lodging-house parlor from which the sun is shut out like a conspirator, is left to the ghosts that float in the empty spaces of a theatre during the daytime. Soon afterward the cast is announced, and then the unreasonable desire to be central and preponderant, to fill the play with himself, that affects the best of actors as well as the poorest, leads to a turmoil which is only quieted by the diplomacy which is indispensable in holding together the jealous elements of a stock company, wherein pre-eminence in individual branches must be subordinate to the maintenance of a general excellence. At the same time that the cast is announced each actor is provided with his part and the cues which precede each of his speeches, copied from the manuscript. The first rehearsal is "with parts"--that is to say, the company are allowed to read the lines from the copies given to them--and while this is in progress the manager has the complete play with the alternate blank pages before him, upon which he writes whatever alterations seem desirable; and already, though none of the accessories are used, the preliminary exercise, so to speak, shows that some speeches which have seemed striking in the reading do not "go" well when spoken by the actor. This rehearsal "with parts" is amusingly incongruous to the spectator. The leading actor reads in an ordinary conversational tone, "My heart is filled with a hatred which checks my utterance, and though you see me now penniless, trodden upon and in these rags, Fate may have in store for me that which will make you humble before me;" while, instead of being at all impoverished or threadbare the leading