It was during this last engagement that there occurred quite an exodus from the Salt Lake Stock company to John Piper's theatre at Virginia City, Nevada. Mr. J. A. Sawtelle and wife and daughter, a girl of twelve or fourteen years, Miss Adams (Mrs. Kiskadden), her daughter Maude, now two years old, accompanied by Mr. Kiskadden, Miss Carrie Cogswell-Carter with her son Lincoln J., then about ten years of age, and the writer went to Virginia City, all with the exception of Mr. Kiskadden and the children being under engagement to play with Piper for the ensuing season. There is much of interest connected with this exodus from Salt Lake. It materially weakened the stock forces, taking away the leading man, Mr. Sawtelle, the leading heavy (the writer), and leading juvenile lady, Miss Adams, and Miss Cogswell, the principal heavy woman; but their places were filled in a little while and the stock pushed along in the same old way. The combination system, however, was now gaining ground and the stock companies throughout the country began to suffer correspondingly, their engagements becoming more and more intermittent as the traveling combination became more numerous. At the opening of the season of '74 and '75 there were so many combinations booked that the managers of the Salt Lake Theatre could not offer the stock company a season's engagement, but only brief periodical engagements between the dates of the various combinations. It was in consequence of this that the above mentioned members of the company took a season's engagement with Mr. Piper of Virginia City. The Comstock was booming in those days and the theatre ran every night, Sundays included. At the close of the Piper season, Miss Adams went to San Francisco taking Maudie with her. There they made their home; Mr. Kiskadden having preceded them there and obtained a good situation as a bookkeeper with the firm of Park & Lacy. Mrs. Kiskadden played occasional engagements at the San Francisco theatres and there in due time little Maude made her first voluntary appearance on the stage, her first appearance which occurred at the Salt Lake Theatre when she was yet in long clothes, having been an involuntary one in which her feelings or inclinations were not consulted.