The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday article saw the light for the first time on the following Monday night. There being no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the town--represented by the critics and the sporting and self-styled Bohemian elements--was there. The performance was to have a popular comedian as the central figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce a once favourite comic-opera prima donna, who had been abroad for some years. This stage queen had once beheld the town at her feet. She had abdicated her throne in the height of her glory, having made the greatest success of her career on a certain Monday night, and having disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly afterward materializing in Paris. There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she had grown a bit passée; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked “as rosy and youthful as ever.” Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot of masculinity classified under the general head of “men about town,” crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab tights, she had a long and noisy reception. My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage manager had served to obtain for me an unusual privilege,--that of witnessing the first night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across the stage and the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish haze, a familiar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in some risk of decapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at once distinguished it from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous faces that rose back of it. The face was that of my man of the restaurant and of the blue-covered manuscript. I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could command most of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from parquet to roof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much sang-froid and a London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous dialogue, came toward the footlights to sing. While the conductor of the orchestra poised his baton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she began: “I'm one of the swells Whose accent tells That we've done the Contenong.”