"Search every garden, strip the shrubby bowers, And strew his path with sweet autumnal flowers! Ye virgins, haste; prepare the fragrant rose And with triumphant laurels crown his brows!" The virgins thus called forth, appeared from their "shrubby bowers," bearing roses and laurel, and singing, as they advanced toward the hero of the evening: "See, we've stripped each flowery bed-- Here's laurels for his lordly head, And while Virginia is his care, May he protect the virtuous fair!" As I looked on Lord Botetourt's statue, and marked its moss-covered figure and its fatuously smiling face, robbed of its nose by the stone of contempt, I remembered this festival, and mused on the vicissitudes of fame. In the year 1752 a new delight was opened to the provincials. Hallam's company of comedians came over in _The Charming Sally_ to act for them. A playbill of that year announces that "at the new theatre in Annapolis by the company of comedians, on Monday next, being the sixth of this instant July, will be performed _The Busy Body_, likewise a farce called _The Lying Valet_. To begin precisely at 7 o'clock. Tickets to be had at the printing-office. No persons to be admitted behind the scenes. Box seats 10s., pit 7s. 6d, gallery 5s." A later bill announces that "children in laps will not be admitted." The favorite plays given by Hallam's Company seem to have been-- "The Suspicious Husband," "Othello," "The Mock Doctor," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Devil To Pay," "A Bold Stroke for a Wife," and "Miss In Her Teens; or, A Medley of Lovers." Our squeamish age would find much to shock, and perhaps little to amuse, in many of those old plays. Congreve's shameless muse set the pace, and the Nell Gwynns of the stage kept it. If we wonder that our ancestors could listen and look, will not our descendants wonder equally at us? Before Hallam and his company came over to set up a professional standard, amateur theatricals were the rage. The Virginia _Gazette_ in 1736 announces a performance of "_The Beaux' Stratagem_ by the gentlemen and ladies of this county," and also that the students of the college are to give _The Tragedy of Cato_ at the theatre. Somehow, Addison's tragedies seem further removed from our sympathies than Congreve's comedies, and we turn with relief to a form of amusement always in fashion and forever modern, the time-honored entertainment of feasting.