THE INFANT BELASCO AND HIS PARENTS, 1854 INSCRIPTION: “Father and Mother and _Me_--during my _first starring_ engagement.--D. B.”] incorporated a city. There Humphrey Belasco continued in business, as a dealer in tobacco, fur, and other commodities, trading with miners and Indian hunters and trappers, and also he dabbled in real estate speculation and took part in mining operations, joining a party that explored the Cariboo Mines region. He was not fortunate in his real estate and mining ventures, nor did he specially prosper in trade,--though, as Macaulay says of Richardson, the novelist, “he kept his shop and his shop kept him.[B]” Humphrey Belasco is mentioned, in a record of that place, as keeping a tobacco shop there, in Yates Street, in 1862. He remained in Victoria for about seven years, and there three of his children were born: Israel, July 25, 1861; Frederick, June 25, 1862, and Walter, January 1, 1864. The elder Belasco was a social favorite, and so considerable was his popularity that he was more than once asked to accept public office,--a distinction which he declined. He is remembered as a modest, lovable person, genial in feeling and manner, a pleasant companion and a clever entertainer in the privacy of his home, and as having been specially fond of quietude. In Victoria much of David’s childhood was passed. From his mother, who was intellectual, imaginative, romantic, and of a peculiarly amiable disposition, he received the rudiments of education: she taught him neatness, self-respect, industry, and the importance of acquiring knowledge. I have heard him speak of her, with deep emotion, as the friend from whom he had derived those lessons of courage, energy, perseverance, and arduous labor that have guided him through life. He was early sent to a school called the Colonial, in Victoria, conducted by an Irishman named Burr, remembered as a person whose temper was violent and whose discipline was harsh. Later, he attended a school called the Collegiate, conducted by T. C. Woods, a clergyman. When about seven years old he attracted the attention of a kindly Roman Catholic priest, Father ---- McGuire, then aged eighty-six, who perceived in him uncommon intelligence and precocious talent, and who presently proposed to his parents that the boy should dwell under his care in a monastery and be educated. Strenuous objection to that arrangement was at first made by David’s father, sturdily Jewish and strictly orthodox in his religious views; but the mother, more liberal in opinion and more sagaciously provident of the future, assented, and her persuasions, coincident with the wish of the lad himself, eventually prevailed against the paternal scruples. In the monastery David remained about two and a half years, supervised by Father McGuire, and he made good progress in various studies. The effect of the training to which he was there subjected was exceedingly beneficial: ecclesiastics of the Roman