is the God of the publican as well as of the Pharisee. Who dares excommunicate me? What child of the Universal Father shall dare to say that another is excluded from His love and care and protection? Verily, the day of Judgment will be a day of startling revelations. And many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” And then the actress fell into silence, and her fine countenance lost that look of captious self-defence, and settled into meditative earnestness. Zuleime arose to go. Mrs. Knight took her hand, and said, gently— “My dear, think over what I have proposed to you. If you decide to accept my proposition, I will take every possible care of you. You shall be as my own daughter. I will shield you from all dangers. I will instruct you in your art. And I will give you the freedom of my wardrobe. Good-night. Will you kiss me?” And she drew Zuleime to her bosom. The poor girl pressed her lips to those of the actress, and slipping through the door, passed up in the dark and cold to her own room. Ida went to bed, but the poor, generous, irritable woman could not sleep for sympathy, for anxiety, and for the sound of Zuleime’s racking cough. “She will never be able to sing much, I am really afraid. But she shall be paid well for dressing, and for making her beautiful face and form a part of the pageantry—that I am determined upon, if I have any influence with the management,” thought Ida, as she sank to sleep. Rusty and threadbare clothing, broken shoes, cold, hunger, and a suffering child, are forcible arguments, and they seconded the persuasions of Ida with tremendous power. Zuleime yielded, and was carried down the current of fate as easily, with as little resistance as the sapling beaten down by the rain, uprooted by the wind, and carried off by the flood, is whirled down the stream. It was the fatal night of the 26th of December, 1811, the night of the burning of the Richmond Theatre, a night ever to be remembered in the annals of that city, and ever to be mourned in the hearts of her citizens. That evening more than six hundred lovers of pleasure were gayly preparing for the theatre; not dreaming, alas! that they also were doomed to take fearful part in an awful tragedy—a tragedy unprecedented in the history of the stage. Before eight o’clock, more than six hundred persons, from pleasant city homes all around, assembled in the fated building; before twelve o’clock, more than one hundred had perished horribly in the flames! and the scarcely surviving five hundred, many wounded, maimed, or burned, all despairingly mourning the awful fate of nearest relatives and friends, returned or were borne back to their desolate homes!