Managers are sometimes very cruel in their treatment of young people who are anxious to adopt the stage. I saw a newspaper item stating that at the Buckingham, a variety show in Louisville, a drop curtain was painted with the huge letters "N. G.," standing for "no good," and the manager ordered that this verdict be lowered in front of every performer who failed to show a fair degree of merit. It happened that the first to deserve this crushing verdict was a remarkably pretty girl, and the audience sympathized with her. She had given an execrable dance, and was in the midst of a woeful recitation, when the "N. G." curtain was lowered. The audience demanded her reappearance and did not permit anybody else to perform until the police had arrested the more gallant and noisy among them. Amateurs who have any money to mingle with their desire to go on the stage find ready takers. I could name several gentlemen who are now alleged professionals, with talents that are not even mediocre, who are tolerated in first-class company only because they pay for the privilege. One way a moneyed, stage-struck person has of getting before the public is to rent a theatre, and hire a company for a night or a week or a month, as the case may be. Society swells generally do this kind of thing, and they never succeed. Marie Dixon was, under another name, a fairly well-to-do, well connected and popular lady of Memphis, Tennessee. She was old enough to have a married son, but did not appear to be more than thirty-six years. Her family had been very wealthy before the war, but that event swept away their possessions, as it swept away the possessions of many others. She was educated and accomplished, but was stage-struck. She had appeared at several amateur concert entertainments in Memphis, and the local papers having complimented her, and her friends having remarked that she was intended for an actress, she boldly, but foolishly, resolved to become one. She made up her mind to rival Mary Anderson, and to overshadow the memory of Ristori and all the great queens of the stage that have made a place for themselves in dramatic history. She paid $2,000 for the use of a St. Louis theatre for six nights; she hired a very bad company at, to them, very extravagant salaries; she bought a wardrobe larger and in some respects richer than that of any established star; then she came to St. Louis with her aged father, whose hopes and money were staked upon her; they put up at the Lindell Hotel, and having left Memphis amid a flourish of trumpets, they fondly expected a wilder flourish when they returned. Miss Dixon appeared before the St. Louis public for six nights, and was a failure. She was no actress. She was ashamed to return to Memphis, and at this writing is still absent from there. The father went home, and, I hear, died of a broken heart. Disappointed friends at first pitied, then laughed at this accomplished lady, whose