Brilliant as this thought was, it did not satisfy the little lady. She kept up the argument all day, and that night paid a visit to the merchant's wife, where the affair got into such a tangle that the two husbands brought in a bachelor friend to shoulder the blame, and who made the excuse that the whole thing was a trick put up by a few gentlemen (among them the bachelor was not) on the dramatic man and merchant to get them into domestic trouble, as they had succeeded in doing, beyond their most sanguine desires. And now that we have been long enough at the back door of the theatre, let us go home and come around to-morrow night to have a view of the plagues and annoyances to be found before the foot-lights. CHAPTER V. BEFORE THE FOOT-LIGHTS. There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in the stage is more than double discounted by the interest they manifest in and towards the audience. The "masher" makes it a market in which to display his fascinations and call upon the susceptible fraction of femininity to inspect and avail themselves of his heart-breaking and soul-wasting wares. Whether he modestly takes his stand in the rear of the auditorium, overcoat on arm and stove-pipe hat gracefully poised upon the thumb of his left hand, while, with polished opera-glass, he sweeps the sea of variegated millinery and obtrusive-hued cosmetics, or bravely hangs up his charms to view on the front row of the dress circle, or prominently displays them in a proscenium box, he is ever the same offensive and shameless barber-and-tailor-shop decoration, moved by a wild ambition to attract and hold feminine attention, and always attaining to a degree of notoriety among the masculine theatre-goers that keeps him overwhelmed with contempt, and causes him to be as readily recognized as if he had a tag tied to his back or spread across his vest front, declaring him to be a fisher after femininity. When the "masher" takes the shape of the young blood, whose short and tightly-fighting coat is matched by the shallowness of the crown of his straight-brimmed hat, and whose eye-glasses straddle his nose as gracefully as his twenty-five-cent cane is carried in his hand, and this irresistible combination of attractions is thrust upon the audience from a box opening, the acme of the lady-killing art is reached and if all the world does not admire the effective tableau it must be because all the world is unappreciative and the "masher" stands on an æsthetic plane to which the rest of mankind cannot hope to aspire. [Illustration: THE "MASHER."]