We had another theater, a very little one, please, where light plays, tableaux, readings and recitations and similar entertainments were offered by the Dramatic Group during the winter. One member of this group, Mr. John Glover Drew, was ambitious, and urged the presentation of something more serious and edifying than merely amusing trifles, and, accordingly, an excursion was made into the realm of the melodrama. Glover, as he was called, was intensely Byronic, after the fashion of the times, and he prepared a succession of thrilling scenes from Byron’s sensational poem, “The Corsair,” for presentation by his fellow players. This melodramatic production was staged with all the pasteboard pomp and secondhand circumstance the little workshop theater could afford and was given with all the fire the high-toned author could impart to his company. The result was disastrous. Glover was a very genial, jolly young man, a fellow of infinite jest, and always full of fun, but his play was distinctly dismal. The spirit of Brook Farm being as distinctly joyous, the melancholy drama went against the grain, and the performance fell dolefully flat. It was the one failure among the many successful entertainments offered by the Festal series, and the members of the cast including the author, were greatly depressed when the curtain went down with the auditorium already nearly empty. Glover undoubtedly had his bad quarter-of-an-hour that night, but the next morning he regained his usual equipoise, and cast off his chagrin with a characteristic gibe, at his own expense. A sympathetic friend ventured to ask if the fiasco was caused, perhaps, by too much blood and thunder in the piece. “Not blood and thunder, but thud and blunder,” was Glover’s quick come-back. We had two or three other plays in the shop, that season, in one of which my father took a small part. This was “The Rent Day,” by Douglas Jerrold, I think. The play opens with a tableau reproducing Wilkies’ picture of “The Rent Day,” and the most important thing my father had to do was to sit at the head of the table in the character of Master Crumbs, the steward. Peter Baldwin, who succeeded Mr. Hecker as baker-general—being therefore given the title of General—usually did the first old man business, but as he was suddenly called to Boston, my father, who happened to be visiting us at the moment, was asked to fill the role of Master Crumbs, which he consented to do, on short notice. There never was such a thing as a theater in the Old Colonie and I can imagine the disturbed feelings of the good Dutch burghers could they have known that their respected fellow citizen, Charles Sears, Esq., of the pier, was actually appearing on the stage as a play actor. One play was given by the boys and girls, or rather by two boys and one girl, Dolly Hosmer, Craze Barlow and myself. We did Box and Cox, a short farce, produced to piece out a vaudeville program.