The Rialto, flooded with the warm sunshine of a glorious spring morning, presented its every-day aspect of leisurely gaiety and business bustle. The theatrical season was already on the wane; each day Broadway's pavements in the immediate vicinity of Forty-second Street became more congested with lean-looking thespians, just in from "the road." The Rialto--the haven of every disheartened barnstormer, the cradle of every would-be Hamlet! An important section of the big town's commercial life, yet a world apart--the world of the theatre, a shallow, artificial, unreal land, with laws and manners all its own; a region of lights and tinsel and mock emotions, its people frankly unmoral and irresponsible as a child, yet ever interesting and not unlovable; luxury-loving and extravagant, flush to-day, bankrupt to-morrow; inflated with false pretense and exaggerated self importance, yet tender-hearted and ingenuous to a fault, and not without their sphere of usefulness--theirs the mission "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature," and in tragedy and comedy, move mankind to tears and laughter, while upholding the best traditions of a noble art. Sweeping northwards from Herald Square as far as Forty-seventh Street, the Rialto, on this particular morning, did full credit to the famous public mart in Venice, from which it took its picturesque name. Here in the heart of theatredom was the players' curb market, the theatrical rendezvous of the metropolis, where the mummer comes both to talk shop with his fellow actor, and seek a new engagement. On every side luxurious theatres reared their stately facades, box-offices open for business invited all to enter, obstreperous ticket speculators jostled passersby in their eagerness to sell their seats. Street hoardings, ash barrels and sandwich men were plastered with flamboyant multi-colored show bills. The play, and nothing but the play was certainly the thing; the hapless stranger was buffetted in a maelstrom of theatrical activity. The very air reeked of calcium and grease paint.