In speaking of his parents Belasco has deeply impressed me by the fervor and sincerity of his filial affections. “My mother,” he has said, “was the best loved woman in Victoria and in San Francisco,--and she was the truest, best friend I ever had or shall have. She was called ’the Good Angel’ of the poorer quarters. As she grew older, in the latter city, when going about in streetcars, conductors would, when she wished to leave, escort her to the sidewalk, or would bring her to the car, if she wished to board it. When she died she had the greatest funeral a private person ever had in San Francisco. My brother told me it seemed as though every vehicle in town was in the line. She was very poetic, romantic, and keenly imaginative and gentleness itself. Any good I have ever done I owe to her.”--In a letter to a friend he writes thus about his mother: “ ... I cannot tell you how close we were--how she seemed always to understand me without words and often [seemed] to be near me when I was in trouble and needed help. You know, I believe such feelings are inspired by something real: ’the realities of the spirit are more real than anything else.’... Very often we exchanged messages just by sending flowers, and it was the same way with my little ’Gussie.’... Flowers have always been a passion with me. Ever since I was a little boy, in Vancouver, and my mother used to come and find me dreaming among them on the hillside, I have loved them all.... But the violets were always my favorites, as they were hers. She always had them about her, from girlhood, and, indeed, my father wooed her with them. There was a bunch of them beside her in the little cellar-room where I was born (so she used to tell me), and when they brought me to her on a pillow she took some in her hand and sprinkled them over me. All my clothes, when I was a baby, had a violet embroidered on them, somewhere. The last gift I ever received from my mother was a black silk scarf, with violets embroidered on it,--and long, long hours it must have taken her to do it, for she could hardly hold a needle. Once, when I was a boy, I took $20 from a secret little hoard of hers, to pay for an operation on my throat which I didn’t want her to know about. Of course she missed it but she never said a word, and when I had saved up the money I just put it in a bunch of violets and left it for her. And when at last she went away and I could not be there I sent violets to cover her grave and say my ’Good-bye.’” BLANCHE BATES AND “NAUGHTY ANTHONY.”