_Captain Dudley Brand_ Osmond Tearle. _Sir Philip Calthorpe_ Gerald Eyre. _Monroe Quilton, Esq._ John Gilbert. _Roberts_ C. E. Edwin. _Barton_ H. Holliday. _Beatrice_ (_Geraldine_) Rose Coghlan. _Lady Elizabeth Calthorpe_ Mme. Ponisi. _Little Beatrice_ Mabel Stephenson. _Agnes_ Celia Edgerton. Belasco left New York in the latter part of December, 1881, and he arrived in San Francisco on Christmas Day. “Chispa,” by Clay M. Greene and Slason Thompson, was produced at the Baldwin Theatre on December 26 and it ran there for two weeks,--in the course of which Maguire returned home; the differences between him and Belasco were composed, and the latter was presently reinstalled in his familiar place at the Baldwin. On January 16, 1882, acting _Matthias_, in “The Bells,” W. E. Sheridan began a season there which lasted for seven weeks, during which he revived “Richelieu,” “Othello,” “Hamlet,” and other plays of the legitimate repertory which he had previously presented in San Francisco (November-December, 1800), and also “King John” and “The Fool’s Revenge.” The last-named tragedy was brought out on March 3, the first performance of it being given for the benefit of Belasco’s old friend and teacher, Mrs. “Nelly” Holbrook. BELASCO AND HIS “THE CURSE OF CAIN.” Sheridan’s season terminated on March 5, and, on the 7th, occurred the first performance of a new play constructed, while that season lasted, by Belasco in collaboration with the excellent and much respected Peter Robertson (1847-1911), long dramatic critic of “The San Francisco Chronicle.” It was called “The Curse of Cain,” and its more active author has written of it as follows: “Strange as it may appear, _Cain_ was my hero. _Abel_ had never appealed to me, any more than his forebears, in the garden of the bright flaming sword, whence the apple-eating Eve had been so forcibly, ejected. ’The Curse of Cain’ in embryo was a simple trifle of an allegory, which afterwards developed into a four-act drama with prologue and epilogue. And now that I look back upon it I think it was somewhat remarkable for strange innovations to the stage of that day. For the first time realistic thunderstorms and lightning effects were introduced, more naturally than anything that had gone before. I do not wish to pooh-pooh modern inventions, double stages, and all the paraphernalia of the latter-day drama, but I do contend that we could not have been outdone.”