After breakfast I was shown to my room where I had a good view of the town and I found we had been largely billed to appear on Thursday night. We had a day of rest before our first performance. We moved in the meantime to the Colonial Hotel or Driard House, and were shown to a comfortable room with a fireplace, quaint and small, in which a bright fire was burning. The room was cheerful and attractive with many windows. The floors were painted and covered with rugs, bright and warm, and the white French curtains hung as in the days of Napoleon. Mahogany furniture of old fashioned shape added to the strange furnishing which was very attractive, and I felt at home at once. About ten o'clock that morning, Walter Campbell came and escorted me to the cupola of the hotel where we could see the city for miles, a good-sized place, with several prominent buildings and churches and a fine sight of Mount Baker in the distance, covered with snow. After a quarter of an hour we decided to have breakfast and joined the rest of the company and a stranger who was presented to us as Commodore Maury, a pleasant and distinguished-looking man who was a welcome addition to our company and extended us many a courtesy while we were in the city. After breakfast the company separated. I retired to my room and practiced an hour before going to try the voices in the Theater Royal. While in the midst of my practice a queer accident occurred in front of the hotel. A man in a watering cart, in backing up to the sidewalk, turned too abruptly and the traces gave way, the cart turned turtle and the poor horse hung in mid-air. Relief was soon at hand, a dozen or more of the brawny Englishmen righted the position of the animal and all was over and no harm done. After a good laugh everyone went his way. At ten o'clock we strolled to the theater to look it over. The people of Victoria think it is fine. They ought to come to California and pattern after some of our playhouses. It was small, the acoustics bad and the mixtures of colors was as a crazy-quilt to me. The boxes were ludicrous in their attempt at ornamentation. The seats were long benches, upholstered with solferino-colored damask and the scenes were the merest daubs. We did not rehearse in the theater. We returned to the hotel and rehearsed in the parlors for an hour, then each one retired for the night. [Illustration: Rev. Dr. J.K. McLean First Congregational Church Oakland, 1890 Rev. P.Y. Cool First M.E. Church Santa Cruz, 1864 Rev. V.M. Law Church of the Advent East Oakland, 1898 Rev. Father Akerly St. John's Episcopal Church Oakland, 1894 Rev. Giles A. Easton Calvary Episcopal Church Santa Cruz, 1864 MINISTERS WITH WHOM MRS. BLAKE-ALVERSON HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED]