The condition of California in 1849 was, to say the least of it, turbulent. Some parts of that State are in a turbulent condition now. Groups of “the boys” can still be discovered. They are not paragons, though, and they never were. The existence of good impulses in uncouth persons does not make them less uncouth. Fine qualities can, and do, exist in beings who are unfamiliar with soap and the toothbrush; but it would seem that the study of human nature can be pursued, more agreeably than elsewhere, among saponaceous branches of the race. It is more pleasant to read about “the boys” than it is to see them. But, broadly speaking, in Belasco’s drama the _Girl_ is the play, and with Miss Bates as the _Girl_ there was little more to be desired. Shorn of all extraneous fringes--variously impious, improper, vulgar, and offensive interjections of profanity and violent expletive--the play is the image of a lovely, impetuous woman’s devotion to her lover,--a devotion that is shown in a series of actions by her to save him from danger and ruin and to make him happy. Feminine heroism is the theme, and the _Girl_ selected to exemplify it is meant to be “a child of nature,” simple, direct, and true--and Belasco was entirely accurate when he wrote that the part fitted the actress for whom he made it from her head to her feet. Given the specified ideal to interpret, Miss Bates placed her reliance on Acting, and there were moments in her performance,--as, for example, in the First Act, as the _Girl_ speaks of the protective instinct in the heart of woman,--when the soul that showed itself in her face was beatific. She gave, throughout, a personation of extraordinary variety and strength. In the situations devised for the heroine,--situations, which, while not radically new, are ingeniously contrived and are fraught with the dominant spell of suspense,--the actress had to express the growth of love; the blissful sense of being loved; the bitter pangs of jealousy; the passionate resentment of a heart that thinks itself betrayed and wronged by the object of its love; the conflict of anger with affection; the apprehension of deadly peril, and the nobility of self-conquest. The exaction of the part is tremendous, equally upon physical resource and nervous vitality, but, at every point, it was met and satisfied. The play exemplifies its author’s remarkable faculty of continuation in the making of characteristic dialogue, together with ample felicity of invention, and it is overlaid with profusion of details. The midnight tryst of the _Girl_ and the _Road Agent_ is not altogether a credible device, but, once assumed and arranged, that situation,--comprehending the outlaw’s detection, as such, by the _Girl_, the awakening of furious jealousy, her turning him out into the storm, her subsequent harboring of him, and the game of cards with the outlaw’s life and liberty staked against the _Girl’s_ whole future,--is handled with consummate skill and moulded to splendid