the first position, dividing some of the leading business with McCullough. William H. Sedley-Smith was the stage manager. Other members of the company were Henry Edwards, John T. Raymond, “Willie” Edouin, Claude Burroughs, John Torrence, J. E. Marble, John Wilson, Edward J. Buckley, W. Caldwell, Frederick Franks, W. F. Burroughs, H. King, Henry Atkinson, E. B. Holmes, Emilie Melville, Annette Ince, Marie Gordon, Mrs. E. J. Buckley, Mrs. F. Franks, Mrs. Charles R. Saunders, and Mrs. Judah. The plays presented were of all kinds and generally of the highest order. Belasco was fortunate in possessing the special favor of the stage manager, and he was permitted many chances of seeing those players. The special idols of his boyish admiration were John McCullough, Walter Montgomery, and Mrs. Bowers. As to Shakespeare--his mother was a lover of the dramatist and a careful student of him, and she early began to instruct her boy in the study of his characters and in the acting of scenes from the plays: one of the first books he ever owned was a large single volume edition of Shakespeare, which, to gratify his childish longing, was sent to him, “from New York,” because he believed nothing could be as fine as what came from that place. “I read it,” he told me, “from the title-page to the last word, with a dictionary and a glossary.” He saw many of the plays of Shakespeare set upon the stage, by some of the most accomplished, conscientious, and scholarly actors and stage managers that have served the art--men and women the capabilities and achievements of any one of whom, in the stage production of Shakespeare, would shame the abilities of all Belasco’s detractors combined,--and he participated, not only as actor but as stage manager, in the representation of those plays. The works of Shakespeare which were thus made [Illustration: DAVID BELASCO AS _MARK ANTONY_. IN “JULIUS CAESAR” “_I will not do them wrong; I rather choose_ _To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,_ _Than I will wrong such honorable men!_” --Act III, sc. 2 Photograph by Bradley, San Francisco. Original loaned by Mrs. David Belasco.]