Belasco’s enthusiasm for Booth has led him, in recent years, to make an extensive collection of precious stage relics associated with that sombre genius: visitors to the reception room on the stage of the Belasco Theatre will find the “star’s” dressing room, which opens off it, indicated by a star of brilliants which was worn, first, by William Charles Macready as _Hamlet_, and, afterward, by Booth, in the same part. There, also, are displayed Booth’s _Brutus_ sandals and sword, his _Macbeth_ spear, his _Bertuccio_ bauble, the mace carried by him when acting _King Richard the Third_, the sceptre he used as _King Lear_, the hat he wore as _Petruchio_, his _Shylock_ knife and scales, and his make-up box. During October of 1876 Belasco worked for a short while with James W. Ward and Winnetta Montague (he appeared with them at the Grand Opera House, October 16, in “The Willing Hand”), as stage manager and as adapter and rectifier of several plays. On Sunday, October 22, he participated in a benefit for Katie Mayhew given at Baldwin’s Theatre, appearing as _Doctor of the Hospital_, in “The Two Orphans.” Soon after that, declining a minor position in a new company, headed by Eleanor Carey and organized for “a grand re-opening of the Grand Opera House” (effected November 13, with “Wanted, a Divorce”), he joined a travelling company, at Olympia, Washington, headed by Fanny Morgan Phelps, and for about three months resumed the precarious life of a strolling player. BELASCO AND “THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERY.” By about the beginning of February, 1877, Belasco was once more in San Francisco, and immediately allied himself, as playwright, stage manager, and actor, with Frank Gardner and his wife, Caroline Swain. Gardner,--who afterward turned his attention to gold mining in Australia and acquired great wealth,--had associated with himself a person familiar with the famous “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion, and together they had devised a variant of that contrivance which was utilized in giving theatrical performances. Belasco, describing it, writes: “There was a stage, covered with black velvet, and a sheet of glass, placed obliquely over a space beneath the stage,--which was called the ’oven.’ Gas lamps were ingeniously concealed so as to give the impression of a phosphorescent light from ghostlike bodies. The characters in the play were obliged to enter the ’oven’ under the black velvet, and to lie on their backs, while their misty shadows were thrown like watery impressions upon the glass plate. As these shadows floated across the surface of the glass, the people in the ’oven’ could easily shake tables and move chairs to the hair-raising satisfaction of the audience.”