reception, attiring herself and their little child in fine array and decking the house with flowers and lighted lanterns. Then, with the child and a servant maid, she takes station at a window, to give him welcome--and there she waits and watches through the night, until the morning breaks. The lapse of time was, in the performance, skilfully and impressively denoted,--the shades of evening darkening into night; stars becoming visible, then brilliant, then fading from view; the lighted lanterns one by one flickering out; the gray light of dawn revealing the servant and the child prone upon the floor sunk in slumber, with the deserted mother standing over them, pale and wan, still gazing fixedly down the vacant road, while the rosy glow of sunrise grew into the full light of day and the sweet sound of the waking songs of birds floated in from a flowering grove of cherry trees. In the representation this scene, during which no word was spoken and no motion made, occupied _fourteen minutes_--and surely no tribute to Belasco’s resource and skill in stage management and stage mechanics could be more significant than the fact that during all that time never did the interest of his audiences waver nor their attention flag. At the end, when _Butterfly_ knows her lover faithless and her life ruined and desolate, she takes her father’s sword,--on which is graven his dying monition, “To _die_ with honor, when we can no longer live with honor,”--and with it deals herself a mortal stroke. This desperate deed is done out of the audience’s sight and as, with ghastly face and a scarf bound round her throat to hide the wound, she staggers forward to clasp her child to her breast, _Pinkerton_ enters the room and _Butterfly_, holding the child in her arms, sinks at his feet, turning on him a look of anguish as she murmurs “Too bad--those robin’--never nes’--again!”--and so dies.