Kansas City, 1789 [1879], January 14. Mr. De Bar, Dear Sir, I take thes opportunity of witring you theas few lines to ask you for an engagement at the Orepry [Opera] house if you can as we would like to get it if we can. i and my trop can do a great meny performence on the stage. W. H. Terrell he can do the Iron Joyrl [iron jaw] performence and do a Jig Dance and a Clog and Double Song and Dance and other tricks. Mr. Benjermer Frankler [Benjamin Franklin] waltz With a pail of water on his head and plays the frence harp the sanetime on the stage and laying down with it on his head and roal all over the floor and Jump 6 feet hiagh in the air on hand and feet. allso and we have the Best french harp players in the world that ever plaid on one. and leaping through a hoop of fire same as a circus. If you can git it for me pleas write soon and let me know. Sam Chrisman is one of my atcters. yours Truly, B. FRANKLIN. Excuse writing and paper. This is a Cold trop. [Illustration: ROSE EYTINGE.] It is hardly necessary for me to say Ben de Bar did not give the "Cold trop" an engagement. Poor old Ben was dead at that time. CHAPTER XV. THE REHEARSAL. When the seeker after histrionic honors has at last crossed the threshold of the stage, he or she will find it entirely different from the glitter and glory with which the imagination had clothed things theatrical. The first revelation made to new-comers in the profession is the rehearsal. This generally begins about ten A. M. and ends about two P. M. In the old days of stock companies, performers had more laborious work to perform than men who carry railroad iron out of, or into, steamboats. Often there were new plays every night, which meant new parts to be memorized, and rehearsals every day. Leaving the theatre at eleven P. M., about the usual hour of closing a performance at that time, the actor took his part with him, and instead of going to his bed, was obliged to sit up and study his lines--no matter how many lengths there were. Torn and worn out with his night's work on the stage, and the mental toil that followed, it was often already morning when the actor sought his couch. He was then obliged to be up in a few hours and at the theatre at ten. If he absented himself there was a fine that would materially reduce his already low salary. Where was the room for enjoyment for the actor or actress in those days? There was little opportunity given to anybody at all employed upon the stage to be of dissolute habits or to indulge in any of the excesses that pulpit-pounders and their intolerant and intolerable followers generally charged against the profession. These super-moral individuals could not make a distinction between the stage of the days of Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mistress Woffington, of Mrs. Jordan and Mrs. Robinson, when filth and licentiousness prevailed because the public found no fault with it, and the same things were prevalent in ranks of the very