"There, my Eleanora Delicia" (this was his name for me, my real, full name being Ellen Alicia), "stick that up in some place where you will often see it. Better put it on _your looking-glass_. And if you can once get those words into your noddle, it will save you a world of unhappiness." I think he was quite right about this. Would that he had been as right in his theories about stage management! He was a rare one for realism. He had _preached_ it in all his plays, and when he produced a one-act play, "Rachael the Reaper," in front of "The Wandering Heir," he began to practice what he preached--jumped into reality up to the neck! He began by buying _real_ pigs, _real_ sheep, a _real_ goat, and a _real_ dog. _Real_ litter was strewn all over the stage, much to the inconvenience of the unreal farm-laborer, Charles Kelly, who could not compete with it, although he looked as like a farmer as any actor could. They all looked their parts better than the real wall which ran across the stage, piteously naked of _real_ shadows, owing to the absence of the _real_ sun, and, of course, deficient in the painted shadows which make a painted wall look so like the real thing. Never, never can I forget Charles Reade's arrival at the theater in a four-wheeler with a goat and a lot of little pigs. When the cab drew up at the stage-door, the goat seemed to say, as plainly as any goat could: "I'm dashed if I stay in this cab any longer with these pigs!" and while Charles Reade was trying to pacify it, the piggies escaped! Unfortunately, they didn't all go in the same direction, and poor dear Charles Reade had a "divided duty." There was the goat, too, in a nasty mood. Oh, his serious face, as he decided to leave the goat and run for the pigs, with his loose trousers, each one a yard wide at least, flapping in the wind! "That's a relief, at any rate," said Charles Kelly, who was watching the flight of the pigs. "I sha'n't have those d----d pigs to spoil my acting as well as the d----d dog and the d----d goat!" How we all laughed when Charles Reade returned from the pig-hunt to rehearsal with the brief direction to the stage manager that the pigs would be "cut out." The reason for the real wall was made more evident when the real goat was tied up to it. A painted wall would never have stood such a strain. On the first night, the real dog bit Kelly's real ankles, and in real anger he kicked the real animal by a real mistake into the orchestra's real drum.