Just before the curtain was rung up I found myself in the midst of the fairy world upon which the brilliancy of the foot-light falls. While the curtain was still down, and before the gasman had opened the floodgates of splendor, the place was dark; not pitch dark, but pretty dark, compared with the brilliancy that shown in, over, and around its space a few minutes later. And then its intricacies, pieces of scenery here, various properties there, and sections of everything and anything scattered anywhere and everywhere, made a fellow feel as if the place was darker than it really was. Glittering and glowing as the stage appears before the foot-lights; wonderfully romantic as are its shades and lights, its love and laughter; and astounding as are its scenic effects; its area and surroundings are terribly realistic when the foot-lights are left behind, and the "business" of a play is once laid bare. Here the sighs of love-sick maidens and the spooning of gilt-edged but uncourageous wooers, the tears of injured innocence and the self-gratulations of hard-hearted villains who still pursue the flying female, the prattle of young mouths and the mumblings of "old men" and "old women," are lost with the departed scenes of the play in the unceasing desire of the actors to get back into their proper social and friendly relations to each other, and, once the prompter's book is closed, stage talk and stage manner are under metaphoric lock and key, and romance is for a while at an end. [Illustration: JNO. A. STEVENS.] On opera bouffe or burlesque nights, however, a great deal of the stage charm clings to the characters even when off the stage, and one is compelled to be interested in the grotesqueness of those to be met in the side scenes--the odd and often pretty creatures who stand, sit, lie or lean around in the "wings" at their own sweet leisure and pleasure. There is something so indescribably funny in the costumes, in the facial make-up, and all that, of the happy opera-bouffer or festive burlesquer, that the eye follows a quaint character through the scenes with the same inalienable interest as that with which the small boy hovers around the heels of an Italian with a hand-organ and a monkey. The eye, however, must not, cannot linger or languish long upon a single one of these walking wardrobes. There is a moving panorama constantly in front of the surprised vision, and before an electric flash could photograph one single individual in his droll toggery there would be a dozen or more "shassaying" before the camera.