on each side of this apron or projecting stage was a private box, finished off with cheap wall paper similar to the interior scenes on the stage. These boxes were well patronized. Every night they were filled with the fair, frail denizens of the camp at the rate of $10 a box. The opening play had already been announced, but owing to the lateness of our arrival, was necessarily postponed for a few nights. Maguire had gotten together some people of more or less experience (mostly less) to fill up the minor parts in the cast. He also took a hand himself and rehearsals were started the same night we arrived. The opening night came around and the Opera House (that's what John called it) was packed to suffocation. The boxes were filled to overflowing with the swellest looking women in the town. The play was "Camille" and Mrs. Bates had them all shedding tears. The girls in the boxes were deeply affected. Most of them were "like Niobe, all tears," but we received no intimation that this powerful sermon of Dumas was instrumental in turning them from their life of shame. Pioche was a camp of about eight thousand people and was "booming." We played four weeks to good paying business. This fairly exhausted the Bates repertoire, and business began to fall off appreciably. So a farewell benefit was worked up for Mrs. Bates and she made her final appearance at Pioche in a blaze of glory, chiefly emanating from a diamond ring with which she was presented on the memorable occasion as a token of regard to a distinguished actress from a few of her Pioche admirers. The Bateses were fortunate. They had been playing on a large percentage of the gross receipts and had cleared up quite a nice little stake in the four weeks they had played and they struck out at once for San Francisco, and from there went to Australia where, in '78, Frank Bates died, after which Mrs. Bates and Blanche, now a girl of eight, returned to San Francisco in 1880. Maguire still kept myself and Dunne and the rest of the company, thinking that with some new and lighter plays we could still do a paying business. The results were not very satisfactory. We played several weeks in a sort of spasmodic way, and then organized a little traveling company in which a clever young girl, Maggie Knight, whom Maguire had discovered, was a feature, and we played back to the C. P. R. R. On one of these occasions in Pioche, a very ludicrous thing happened which should not go unrecorded. We were playing the burlesque of "Pocahontas." Maguire was playing Captain John Smith, the writer Powhatan, and Johnny Dunne, as we were short of ladies, was playing Pocahontas. In the scene where Smith is brought in a prisoner and is about to be executed, a catastrophe happened to John Maguire, so sudden and appalling, should he live to be as old as Methusaleh, I doubt if he would ever forget it. Where Smith says, after viewing the stone on which he is to be decapitated,