The “dress-rehearsal” began at six o’clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes--it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o’clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep. Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel--cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery. The hour of the performance came; and Thyrsis, like a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience and the play. The house was crowded; and the play-wright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of the night before had been needless--the performance went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also, to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to “score”. He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered what understanding they could have of his tragedy of “genius”. But they seemed to be understanding; at any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd smashed the violin over von Arne’s head and the curtain went down, there was quite a little uproar. Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which was also applauded; and then came the last act, and the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time, and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box, rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the play-wright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play was a certain success; and then he went to bed, assuredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that fifty-cent hotel! But alas--the next morning, there were the local papers; and with one accord they all “roasted” the play! Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the play itself--those extracts which the two professors had read from the criticisms of Lloyd’s concert! Thyrsis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence at the satire!