sustain the requirements of a singing part, felt that the proffered opportunity must not be neglected; after discussing the point with his pupil a decision to essay the venture was quickly made, and, on April 15, 1891, laying aside for the moment all other plans, Belasco, Mrs. Carter and her mother sailed for England on board the steamship City of New York, and from Southampton proceeded at once to France. “When we reached Paris,” writes Belasco, “we found the Bouffes Parisiennes ’selling out’ and ’Miss Helyett’ the talk of the town. It was so full of possibilities that I cabled ’C. F.’ to secure the rights before I saw the last act.” That recommendation was promptly heeded by Frohman. Writing of an interview with Edmond Audran, author of the music, which occurred soon after he had seen the play, Belasco records: “I asked him to give me a letter in praise of the singer who was to play the part, but without mentioning her name, for not only did we wish to create a surprise in America, but to avoid complications with Wyndham in London. I knew he would want us to engage a singer of established reputation, so I avoided mentioning the name of the artist who was to have the title-part, Wyndham was quite insistent when I met him in London, but I handed him Audran’s letter, which proved to be the magic stroke. Before the day was over, all arrangements were made by cable.” “MISS HELYETT” AND MRS. CARTER. The production of the mongrel play with music, called in our Theatre “Miss Helyett,”--a fabric which commingles comic opera with the farrago known as “farce-comedy,”--was a minor incident in Belasco’s struggle for advancement. Audran’s music, though not in his best vein, is generally tuneful, gay, and spirited. The text was “rewritten from the French of Maxime Boucheron by David Belasco,” and the play was first produced in America, November 3, 1891, at the Star Theatre, New York, Mrs. Carter then making her only appearance in a musical composition, and that being also Belasco’s only association with comic opera, after he left the Theatre of San Francisco. The scene is laid at the Hotel del Norte, in the Spanish Pyrenees Mountains. The story, which is indelicate, relates to a ludicrous accident to a young Quakeress, of demure appearance and frolicsome disposition, whose hypocritical father is conducting her through Europe in search of an advantageous marriage. This female, known as _Miss Helyett_, falls over a precipice and is caught, buttock-end uppermost, in a convenient tree, from which predicament she is rescued by a strolling painter. She manages to conceal her face from her deliverer, and she parts from him without ascertaining his identity or disclosing her own. Later she determines to discover and to marry the man who is already so familiarly acquainted with her “secret symmetry” (as Byron calls it), and that purpose she ultimately accomplishes. Her