An enormous crowd of well-dressed people was flocking into Van Buren's Varieties, to the great delight of Mr. Van Buren himself, who stood at the checktaker's wicket, with his friend Mr. Morris Jacobs by his side. Mr. Van Buren had that amount of vanity which is inseparable from the theatrical profession, and to see himself recognised by members of the crowd, to hear the flattering remarks made on his personal appearance and his histrionic talents, rendered him supremely happy. Mr. Jacobs, who had no pretensions to manly beauty, being a short stout man, with an enormous head and an exaggerated Jewish cast of countenance, contented himself with silently counting the people as they came in, and keeping a wary eye upon the checktaker. It was a long time since the Varieties had boasted such an audience; every seat was taken, and the large lobbies at the back of the circles were inconveniently crowded. There was scarcely one in the many-sided phases of New York society which was not represented. The journals had done their work so well, and Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Jacobs had worked their various agencies with such success, that a desire to see the English actress and renew acquaintance with the handsome tragedian had been generated amongst people who had not visited the theatre for years. Good old Knickerbocker families, prouder of the 'Van' before their names than of the enormous fortunes which had accrued to them from the sale of the lands which had once formed the gardens and grounds of their old red-brick houses, and which now formed avenues and streets in the most fashionable districts; steady church-goers, whose wildest idea of dissipation was attendance at a lecture or a mass meeting; men who passed their days in Wall-street, and their evenings at the extemporised exchange in the hall of the Fifth-avenue Hotel--all these classes seemed to have caught the infection, and were largely represented. The regular attendants at theatrical representations--the club men, Fifth-avenue families, the people who wished to be thought 'in the style,' and whose newly-gotten wealth has made of them a plutocracy as imperious, as intolerant, and as hollow as any aristocracy in the Old World--all these were in fullest force. Such a reunion was seldom to be seen at so late a period; and the buzzing conversation of friends which took place before the commencement of the play was not, as usual, about the balls and entertainments to which they were invited, but treated rather of their intended summer flights; the various merits of style at Saratoga, rural quiet at Lake George, boisterous frivolity at Long Branch, or sea breezes at Newport being fully discussed.