"I see now," I said; "that must be his granddaughter, the future impersonator of the great dual character, Little Eva and Topsy."
(1896.)
THE REHEARSAL OF THE NEW PLAY
HEN Wilson Carpenter came to the junction of the two great thoroughfares he stood still for a moment and looked at his watch, not wishing to arrive at the rehearsal too early. He found that it was then almost eight o'clock, and he began at once to pick his way across the car-tracks that were here twisted in every direction. A cloud of steam swirled down as a train on the elevated railroad clattered along over his head; the Cyclops eye of a cable-car glared at him as it came rushing down-town; from the steeple of a church on the corner, around which the mellow harvest-moon peered down on the noisy streets, there came the melodious call to the evening service; over the entrance to a variety show a block above a gaudy cluster of electric lights illuminated the posters which proclaimed for that evening a Grand Sacred Concert, at which Queenie Dougherty, the Irish Empress, would sing her new song, "He's an Illigant Man in a Scrap, My Boys." As the young dramatist sped along he noted that people were still straggling by twos and threes into the house of worship and into the place of entertainment; and he could not but contrast swiftly this Sunday evening in a great city with the Sunday evenings of his boyhood in the little village of his birth.
He wondered what his quiet parents would think of him now were they alive, and did they know that he was then going to the final rehearsal of a play of which he was half author. It was not his first piece, for he had been lucky enough the winter before to win a prize offered by an enterprising newspaper for the best one-act comedy; but it was the first play of his to be produced at an important New York house. When he came to the closed but brilliantly lighted entrance of this theatre, he stood still again to read with keen pleasure the three-sheet posters on each side of the doorway. These parti-colored advertisements announced the first appearance at that theatre of the young American actress, Miss Daisy Fostelle, in a new American comedy, "Touch and Go," written expressly for her by Harry Brackett and Wilson Carpenter, and produced under the immediate direction of Z. Kilburn.
When the author of the new American comedy had read this poster twice, he took out his watch again and saw that it was just eight. He threw away his cigarette and walked swiftly around the corner. Entering a small door, he went down a long, ill-lighted passage. At the end of this was a small square hall, which might almost be called the landing-stage of a flight of stairs leading to the dressing-rooms above and to the property-room below. This hall was cut off from the stage by a large swinging-door.
As Carpenter entered the room this door swung open and a nervous young man rushed in. Catching sight of the dramatist, he checked his speed, held out his hand, and smiled wearily, saying, "That's you, is it? I'm so glad you've come!"
"The rehearsal hasn't begun, has it?" Carpenter asked, eagerly.
"Star isn't here yet," answered the actor, "and she's never in a hurry, you know. She takes her own time always, Daisy does. I know all her little tricks. I've told you already that I never would have accepted this engagement at all if I hadn't been out since January. I don't see myself in this part of yours. I'll do my best with it, of course, and it isn't such a bad part, maybe; but I don't see myself in it."