In his social relations a performer, like many another great man or woman, is liable to mistakes of head and heart. It is a pretty generally known fact, for instance, that the most famous tenor of our day is so careful of his gloves as to fly into a towering rage with any lady who touches them with more than her finger-tips, in the most impassioned duets. And a very celebrated _prima donna_ who takes the world captive as much by the exceeding loveliness of her person and manner as by her wonderful voice, is in the habit of beating her maid abominably two or three times a week. It would, indeed, be an acute analysis which should determine just what it is in the higher walks of music that makes the lives of its special votaries so strikingly inharmonious. He or she who has known of an operatic company wherein the four leading persons were on speaking terms with one another, off the stage, has known a remarkable fact in the history of that peculiar class. Of these, and of the dramatic profession proper, I would perhaps have no right to speak here, were it not for the fact that, in my time at least, there was a sort of fraternity among all people who appeared before foot-lights. I do not know whether the members of cork-opera associate with the better class of actors at this day; but I think they do not. I would venture to assert, however, that among the lower orders of actors, minstrels, and circus-riders there ever will be such a spirit of bohemianism--such a touch of hearty, reckless good-nature--as will always make their whole world kin. Indeed, an honest old professional friend of mine, whom I met last winter, spoke of lecturing as “the show-business.” There may have been more or less of truth in his remark. This, at least, is no time or place to discuss the question. But there was, indubitably, in this extending of the right hand of fellowship from the side show to the lyceum, a fine illustration of the catholic spirit which links the “profession” together. Jealousy may be set down as the chief failing of the whole race, high or low. I have known men, whose names have made some noise in the world, to measure with straws the comparative sizes of the letters in which they were announced on a poster. But among minstrels, especially, a thorough wordliness and boon-companionship enable them generally to be civil to one another, whatsoever their private feelings. An old showman, at last, comes to look upon the quiet ways of ordinary life with that same kind of longing, romantic interest with which a certain species of imaginative youth are always looking upon the impossible glory of travelling with a show. A droll sighing for rural pursuits seems to be the most common form taken by the romance of your veteran itinerant. Yet, oddly enough, there is scarcely any one whom he holds, personally, in such ridiculous contempt as he does the honest farmer.