It was all no use though. The audience, on the opening night, greeted its second appearance with cries of kindly recognition, and at once entered into the Humor of the thing. A Surrey-side Saturday-night audience are generally inclined to be cheerful, and, if the fun on the stage doesn’t satisfy them, they rely on their own resources. After one or two more appearances, the cottage became an established favorite with the gallery. So much so, indeed, that when two scenes passed without it being let down, there were many and anxious inquiries after it, and an earnest hope expressed that nothing serious had happened to it. Its reappearance in the next act (as something entirely new) was greeted with a round of applause, and a triumphant demand to know, “Who said it was lost?” It was not until the last rehearsal that the supers were brought into play--or work, as they would have called it. These supers were drawn from two distinct sources. About half of them were soldiers, engaged to represent the military force of the drama, while the other half, who were to be desperate rioters, had been selected from among the gentry of the New Cut neighborhood. The soldiers, who came under the command of their sergeant, were by far the best thing in the play. They gave an air of reality to all the scenes in which they appeared. They _were_ soldiers, and went about their business on the stage with the same calm precision that they would have displayed in the drill yard, and with as much seriousness as if they had been in actual earnest. When the order was given to “fix bayonets and charge,” they did so with such grim determination, that there was no necessity at all to direct the stage mob to “feign fear and rush off L. I. E.” They went as one man, in a hurry. There was no trouble, either, about rehearsing the soldiers--no cursing and swearing required, which, in itself, was an immense saving of time. The stage manager told the sergeant what was wanted. That gruff-voiced officer passed the order on to his men (first translating it into his own unintelligible lingo), and the thing was done. To represent soldiers on the stage, real soldiers should, without doubt, be employed, but it is no good attempting to use them for anything else.