“My little Augusta,” writes Belasco in a note made for me, “was the gentlest creature I have ever known and the kindest. No one but myself will ever know how many poor girls and young men have had places _made_ for them in my companies because she came and asked it, with her dear little arms about my neck. And she had good judgment, too; I never have regretted employing any of the people she interceded for. She was just a child to the very end. She had caught some of my foolish little superstitions, and when she died she was surrounded with pretty little painted butterflies that she had pinned about her to help her to get well--‘and I know they will,’ she told the doctor, ‘because my father believes in them and says so!’ Each of my girls was my ‘favorite’ child, but the younger was my special companion, who always took care of me. Though she might have been up till all hours the night before, she never missed getting up to see that I had my breakfast properly, and I never got home too late for her to come pattering to my room to see me safely tucked into bed. I think that, in her heart, the poor child must have had some premonition that she was going to die soon, because she was so fascinated by my play of ‘Peter Grimm.’ I had no thought, when I was writing it, that she was to be taken away from me; but I had long wanted to write something that might show death in a beautiful way; something that would touch on immortality as a vivid reality, just a flash beyond this life, and so help to inspire hope. I used to talk to my little girl about it, and she was the first to read my play when it was finished. I gave it to her one evening and waited for her verdict far into the night, and her approval meant much to me. She attended all the rehearsals, and one night she told me that after seeing ‘Peter Grimm’ no one should be afraid to die. It was the last play she ever saw,--and it is my comfort to believe that its message entered her soul.” Belasco’s elder daughter, Reina Victoria, was married to the theatrical manager Morris Gest, of New York, at Sherry’s, in that city, on June 1, 1909. A DRAMA OF SPIRITUALISM. (Fragmentary Notes, Not Revised.) The extreme dissatisfaction of the _Ghost_, who, on returning from the spirit world to this mundane sphere, ascertains that his, or her, earthly sweetheart or husband has formed a nuptial alliance with somebody else has been noticed by various poetical writers in deeply affecting verse, dramatic, descriptive, and pathetic,...