laughed if I had been on my death-bed when he said to _Hamlet_, 'I am thy father's ghost!' He looked more like a drummer for a wholesale confectionery house, with a sort of tin skimmer on his head, and I believe the audience would have gone wild with laughter if it had not been for Mr. Booth. I don't believe you could get him to laugh on the stage for a million dollars. He just looked at the _Ghost_ as though it was a genuine one, and the audience looked at Booth, and forgot all about the ulster and the _Ghost's_ pants being rolled up at the bottom. It was probably the greatest triumph that an actor ever had for Mr. Booth to compel the vast audience to forget the ludicrous surroundings and think only of the character he was portraying. I wouldn't have missed the night's performance for a thousand dollars, and when, at 10 o'clock, I heard the boys getting the trunks up-stairs, I was almost sorry. The last two acts were played with the costumes, but they were no better performed than the first. Still, I think, on the whole, I had rather the baggage would be there. It makes a manager feel better." [Illustration: M'KEE RANKIN.] In the olden times, and in the days of the early American theatre, the dressing-rooms were beneath the stage, and were by no means the perfect and cozy places that are to be found in existence at present. Hodgkinson, I think it was, who, during the last century built the first theatre having dressing-rooms above and upon the stage. Later improvement has removed the dressing-rooms, in first-class houses, entirely from the stage, ample and neatly-furnished rooms being provided in adjoining buildings. This change has been necessitated by the demand made upon theatrical managers for greater stage room and better opportunities than they had heretofore in keeping up with the growing taste for extensive scenic representations with magnificent appointments. The star of a company, male or female, always has the best dressing-room the establishment affords, and it is generally very close to the green-room. Minor performers share their rooms; and the captain of the supers usually has an apartment beneath the stage where he gathers his Roman mob, or marshals his mail-clad but awkward squad of warriors. No better burlesque upon this ill-clothed, dirty-faced, knock-kneed and ridiculous theatrical contingent has ever been presented either in type or on the stage, than the character of the Roman Lictor created by Louis Harrison in San Francisco, and afterwards relegated to another performer in "Photos." The story is told that Harrison having been cast for the part of a lictor in a tragedy in which John McCullough took the leading role, he grew offended, having higher aspirations than mere utility business, and determined to make the part funny and, if possible, spoil the scene. When he came on the stage, he was in war-paint, his face strewn with gory colors and intermingling black; he had on the dirtiest costume he could find, with