beginner on the stage, a sort of strolling spouter, still _she_ found my performances worth coming to see, over and over again!” The lover’s suit was not impaired by the fact that presently he suffered a serious physical injury, the rupture of a vein in one of his feet, which took a course so unfavorable there was danger that amputation would be necessary: a dark-haired, pale, dreamy-eyed, romantic youth sometimes becomes more than usually interesting to a gentle, compassionate young woman when he is hurt and suffering. Although incapacitated for several weeks, during which time Miss Loverich paid him many delicate attentions, Belasco finally recovered, after a minor operation,--though, from his account of this episode, I surmise he came near dying under an anæsthetic. For a while he was compelled to use crutches, but ultimately he resumed his professional labor. The marriage of David Belasco and Cecilia Loverich was solemnized, August 26, 1873, at the home of his parents, No. 174 Clara Street, San Francisco,--Rabbi Neustader performing the ceremony. At that time the actor was employed at Shiels’ Opera House: during about a year after their marriage his wife travelled with him on some of his various barnstorming expeditions--and that was the happiest experience of his life. The engagement of the Chapman Sisters at the Metropolitan Theatre was ended on April 27, 1873, with a representation of “Cinderella” (produced there April 23),--in which Belasco probably participated,--that being the last regular theatrical performance given there. During several weeks immediately sequent to that event Belasco travelled with the Chapman Sisters, under the management of Woodard, playing in Sacramento (May 3) and in many other California and Pacific Coast cities and towns. By about the middle of June, however, he had returned to San Francisco; and, not being able to obtain immediate employment in the theatres, he worked for about two months as amanuensis for an old actor, James H. Le Roy, who had turned his attention to playwrighting. On June 30 Belasco was present at the opening of Shiels’ Opera House (afterward the Opera House, Gray’s Opera House, etc.), when Bella Pateman (1844-1908) made her first appearance in San Francisco,--acting _Mariana_, in “The Wife,” with Frank Roche as _Julian St. Pierre_ and A. D. Billings as _Antonio_. “They did three or four more plays at Shiels’,--‘The Marble Heart,’ ’The Lady of Lyons,’ and other well-worn old pieces,”--so Belasco has said to me; “but the business was light and they needed a novelty. I had mentioned Wilkie Collins’ ’The New Magdalen’ [published that year] to Le Roy as containing good material for a play and he had bought a copy of the book and begun to make a dramatization. He told Miss Pateman about it and when she agreed that it would make a fine play for her he hastened his work, dictating to me, and it was brought out soon afterward.” Le Roy’s “dramatization” of Collins’ novel was produced at