emerged in his supremely repulsive perversion of Shakespeare’s _Othello_: Rossi acted in association with Louise Muldener and he played at the Baldwin for one week,--closing with “Edmund Kean.” Attendance throughout his engagement was paltry--the treasury was empty--neither Baldwin nor anybody else would advance more money to Maguire--and the end had come. To Belasco it came as a relief. “The last year or so at the Baldwin,” he has declared to me, “was a good deal of a nightmare. Although Maguire and I had our differences, I liked him, I pitied him, and I stuck to him till the end. But my salary and my royalties were often unpaid: we had much trouble with our actors, so that sometimes I had to bring in amateurs who wanted experience and would play for nothing, or, sometimes, even pay for an opportunity to go on! I not only was stage manager, but I painted scenery, played parts when we were left in the lurch, helped in the front of the house, attended to the advertising, and even borrowed money for Maguire, whenever I could. But the Rossi engagement was the last straw. Baldwin’s lawyer notified Maguire that the theatre was up for lease--and I was glad when it was all over.” BELASCO AND GUSTAVE FROHMAN.--THEY REVIVE “THE OCTOROON.” Nobody, however, seems to have been eager to rush in where so many others had recently failed, and the Baldwin, except for a couple of benefits (the first, a performance of “Chispa,” May 18, given for Phœbe Davis, under direction of J. R. Grismer; the second, given May 27, a revival of “The New Magdalen,” for the public favorite Mrs. Judah), remained closed for about two months. During that period Gustave Frohman, the eldest of three brothers influentially associated with the American Stage, came to San Francisco, as representative of the proprietors of the New York Madison Square Theatre, in charge of a company headed by Charles Walter Couldock and Effie Ellsler, presenting “Hazel Kirke.” With Gustave Frohman Belasco immediately formed a friendly acquaintance which vitally affected his subsequent career. “Hazel Kirke” was brought forward at the California Theatre on May 30--and even before that presentment had been made Belasco had suggested to Frohman another venture. This was a “sensation revival” of the old play of “The Octoroon.” Calender’s Colored Minstrels had just concluded an engagement at Emerson’s Standard Theatre, and it was part of Belasco’s scheme to employ that negro company and make use of it as auxiliary to performance of Boucicault’s play. Gustave Frohman acceded to Belasco’s suggestion, arranged for the proposed appearance of Callender’s Minstrels, leased the Baldwin Theatre, and there revived “The Octoroon,” on June 12, at low prices,--twenty-five to seventy-five cents. This shrewdly conceived enterprise was, because of Belasco’s felicitous treatment of old material and his skilful direction of the players, an instant popular success. A contemporaneous commentator writes about it as follows: