Belasco’s financial debt to Piper must have been paid or compounded on or about March 1, 1874, and his engagement in Virginia City terminated. On March 10, that year, he certainly was employed as a super, at the California Theatre, on the occasion of Adelaide Neilson’s first appearance in San Francisco. The play was “Romeo and Juliet”: Lewis Morrison acted _Romeo_ and Barton Hill _Mercutio_. Miss Neilson’s engagement (during which she played _Rosalind_, _Lady Teazle_, _Julia_, in “The Hunchback,” and _Pauline_, in “The Lady of Lyons,” as well as _Juliet_) ended on March 30: Belasco, whose admiration for that great actress was extreme, contrived to be employed at the California Theatre during the whole of it. On April 4, following, “the Entire Lingard Combination” appeared at the Opera House (so designated) in an English version of Feuillet’s “La Tentation,” and on April 6 John T. Raymond acted at the California Theatre as _Hector Placide_, in Boucicault’s version of the same play, called “Led Astray.” Both those representations were seen by Belasco. On April 23 Raymond, at the California, produced, for the first time, a stage synopsis made by Gilbert S. Densmore, of “The Gilded Age,” by Samuel L. Clemens and Charles Dudley Warner. Writing of it, Belasco says: “While that play was building Densmore talked it all over with me. As it was originally written it was in five long acts and had in it a curious medley of melodrama.... When the script was eventually read to him [Raymond], all the comment he made, with a few of those choice expletives which he knew so well how to choose, was that he hated all courtroom scenes, except those in ’The Merchant of Venice’ and in Boucicault’s ’The Heart of Midlothian.’... It was in this frame of mind that he was finally persuaded to try ’The Gilded Age.’ Of course, the play needed a lot of re-writing, and I don’t believe any one really thought it would be successful. It was put on as a try-out because the man was in such sore need of a vehicle, and, like so many other plays which are produced as makeshifts, it soared its way into instant popularity. It was not by any means a wonderful play in itself, it was merely another instance of the personality of the player being fitted to the part, and in the _rôle_ [_sic_] of _Colonel Mulberry Sellers_ John T. Raymond found himself and, incidentally, fame and fortune.” That is not altogether an accurate account of the dramatic genesis of “The Gilded Age.” Densmore’s adaptation of the book was piratical, and Clemens, hearing of it, protested vigorously, by telegraph, against continuance of its presentment. It was acted _only once_ in San Francisco, in 1874. Densmore finally arranged to sell his stage version to Clemens, and that author himself made a dramatization of the novel. Writing about it, to William Dean Howells, he says: