A week later I opened at Easton, Pa. I had a cold in the head and an old wig; the cold I obtained in Philadelphia, the wig in Easton, it was an old one (the wig) having lost my good one in Philly the week previous. * * * An uncle of mine graciously advanced me the price of a ticket to Philadelphia. * * * The watch was worth considerably more than $2. Six months later I might have been seen doing my specialty in Paterson, N. J.; provided you came Monday afternoon. * * * A performer in the same dressing-room asked me how much I paid for my trunk, which was a duplicate of his; $6 I said; why, I paid $12 for mine, he averred. And that was all I got out of the engagement. But that suit, little did the young lady who made it for me dream it would one day become historical; she is now a sedate matron in Detroit. Wonder if she still remembers it? In the fall of 1898 I was a member of one of the many California Minstrel organizations that have invaded the country in the past fifty years. The Spring and Summer of 1900 found me selling pasteboards to the Southerners while with the Primrose & Dockstader Minstrels; in the Fall of 1900 I was agent for Andrew Robson in “The Royal Box;” 1901-02, agent for “Pud’dnhead Wilson,” with William S. Gill in the name part, Walker Whiteside, and a return to Primrose & Dockstader; 1902-03, manager, Western Alphonse & Gaston Co.; 1903-04, treasurer, Great Lafayette Company. At various times I acted as usher and lithographer at the Park, Walnut and Arch Street Theatres in Philadelphia; Columbus Theatre, New York City, and the Park in Brooklyn. In July, 1907, I conceived the idea of appearing daily at the ball games in New York City, and in the following afternoon’s paper give an accurate account of the conversations entered into, together with the description of the parties spoken to; in addition having my own features reproduced daily together with an accurate description of myself; to any party who could single me out was given a free pass to all the ball games on the ground where I was detected. Under the title of the “Man in the Bleachers” I ran those on the New York _Evening World_ with great success for five weeks. Then came the idea of giving to the world the lives and careers of the minstrels, thus “presenting to the public and preserving to posterity the peculiarities and personalities of prominent performers of the past and present;” and here it is, after three years’ exhaustive and patient labor. Now for the big show. THE FIRST BLACK-FACE PERFORMER.