It was long before Los Angeles had anything like a regular theater, or even enjoyed such shows as were provided by itinerant companies, some of which, when they did begin to come, stayed here for weeks; although I remember having heard of one ambitious group of players styling themselves _The Rough and Ready Theater_, who appeared here very early and gave sufficient satisfaction to elicit the testimony from a local scribe, that "when Richmond was conquered and laid off for dead, the enthusiastic auditors gave the King a smile of decided approval!" Minstrels and circuses were occasionally presented, a minstrel performance taking place sometime in the fifties, in an empty store on Aliso Street, near Los Angeles. About the only feature of this event that is now clear in my memory is that Bob Carsley played the bones; he remained in Los Angeles and married, later taking charge of the foundry which Stearns established when he built his Arcadia Block on Los Angeles Street. An Albino also was once brought to Los Angeles and publicly exhibited; and since anything out of the ordinary challenged attention, everybody went to see a curiosity that to-day would attract but little notice. Speaking of theatrical performances and the applause bestowed upon favorites, I must not forget to mention the reckless use of money and the custom, at first quite astounding to me, of throwing coins--often large, shining slugs--upon the stage or floor, if an actor or actress particularly pleased the spendthrift patron. In October, 1855, William Abbott, who was one of the many to come to Los Angeles in 1853, and who had brought with him a small stock of furniture, started a store in a little wooden house he had acquired on a lot next to that which later became the site of the Pico House. Abbott married Doña Merced Garcia; and good fortune favoring him, he not only gradually enlarged his stock of goods, but built a more commodious building, in the upper story of which was the Merced Theater, named after Abbott's wife, and opened in the late sixties. The vanity of things mundane is well illustrated in the degeneration of this center of early histrionic effort, which entered a period of decay in the beginning of the eighties and, as the scene of disreputable dances, before 1890 had been pronounced a nuisance.