shop, fraternized with players at the theatres, gaining friends and popularity, and where he spent the rest of his life. David was sent to the Lincoln Grammar School, which for some time he continued to attend. There he was studious, and there, in particular, he was trained in elocution,--that art having been specially esteemed by his teachers. Among the persons who, at various times, instructed him in elocution were Dr. Ira G. Hoitt, Miss---- James, Professor Ebenezer Knowlton, and Miss “Nelly” Holbrook, once an actress of distinction (she figures among the oldtime female players of _Hamlet_ and _Romeo_), mother of the contemporary actor (1917) Holbrook Blinn. The boy’s talent for declamation had been quickly perceived, and a judicious endeavor was made to foster and develop it. Among the poems he was taught to recite, and which, in the esteem of his teachers, he recited well, were “The Vagabonds,” by John Townsend Trowbridge; “The Maniac,” by Matthew Gregory Lewis; “Curfew Must Not Ring To-night,” by Rosa Hartwick Thorpe, and “Bernardo del Carpio,” by Felicia Hemans. Those poems were well chosen for the purpose in view, because each of them contains a dramatic element propitious to a declaimer. GLIMPSES OF BOYHOOD. At one time, in his boyhood, at Victoria, Belasco was adopted by the local Fire Department as “a mascot,” and when parades of the firemen occurred,--the hook and ladder vehicle being drawn with ropes by the men,--the little lad either walked at the head of the line or rode, perched high upon the wagon, arrayed in a red shirt, black trousers and boots, and a fire-helmet. After removing, with his parents, from Victoria to San Francisco, he was sent to a school called the Fourth Street, and it was from there that he went to the Lincoln. He took the honors for penmanship, being assigned to keep the school “rolls,” and sometimes his “compositions” were framed and hung in the halls, for the edification of other pupils. There, also, he was awarded a gold medal, as being the best reader and performer of Tragedy,--a prize which he pawned for the benefit of the family,--while his chum, James O. Barrows, obtained a silver medal for special cleverness in Comedy. As a schoolboy he was particularly fond of reading “dime novels,” which, for convenience of surreptitious perusal, he customarily concealed in his boots. For some time after their return to San Francisco the Belascos dwelt in a house in Harrison Street; later, they resided in Louisa Street.