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AN EXCITING SCENE.

dressing-room had been entered, and the velvet collar with its row of priceless pearls had disappeared from the toilet table. The event was so terrible, her nerves so shaken, that in spite of the assurance of the chief police magistrate, who happened to be in the theatre at the moment, that he was sure to find the thief in a very short time, for he had the clue already, poor Mlle. Mendel was so overcome by grief that her memory failed her entirely, so that on returning to the stage not a word could she remember of her part. The audience waited for some time in astonishment at the silence maintained by the actress; the actress gazed at the audience in piteous embarrassment, until, by a sudden inspiration, and almost mechanically, indeed, she remembered she had the rehearsal copy of the play in the pocket of her apron. She drew it forth without hesitation, and began to read from it with the greatest self-possession imaginable. At first the audience knew not whether to laugh or be angry, but presently memory, pathos, forgetfulness of all but her art had returned to Mlle. Mendel, and in the utterance of one of the most impassioned sentiments of her speech she flung the rehearsal copy into the orchestra and went on with her part without pause or hesitation. The applause of the audience was so tremendous that one of the witnesses to the scene has told us that the great monster chandelier in the centre of the roof swung to and fro with the vibration. But on her return to her dressing-room the excitement proved too much for her, and she fainted away. On coming back to consciousness it was to find Duke Louis at her feet, and the head commissaire standing by her side, bidding her take courage, for the pearls had been found. "Where are they?" exclaimed she. "Are you sure that none are missing? Have none been stolen ?" Duke Louis then clasped round her neck the string of pearls, complete at last, no longer sewn on to the velvet

THE FAIRY PEREINA.

445

band, but strung with symmetry, and fastened with a diamond clasp. What more could be done by the devoted lover? He had spared neither pains nor sacrifice to attain his end, and Mlle. Mendel consented to become his wife. The Emperor of Austria appears to have been much moved by the story, and suggested the nomination of the bride elect to the title of Baroness de Wallersee, which thus equalized the rank of the fiances, and enabled them. to marry without difficulty. They live the most retired. life possible in their little chateau on Lake Stahnberg. They say that the Duchess Louise of Bavaria never puts off, night or day, the necklace of pearls, the clasp of which she had riveted to her neck, and that in consequence of this peculiarity she is known all through the country round by the name of the Fairy Perlina, from the old German tale of the Magic Pearl."

The critic of a New York journal recently printed an article containing so much shrewd wisdom on this subject that I quote a paragraph from it: "Because actresses have become duchesses, it by no means follows that every actress who marries of the stage will become one. The men who solicit them are seldom lords in disguise or Admirable Crichtons. On the contrary, they are too often. adventurers, who cast up with keen calculation the exact value of the actress, and propose to her as a commercial speculation. A popular actress is worth anywhere from five to twenty thousand dollars a year income, and that is no light temptation to the well-dressed idlers, loungers, betting sharps, and Bohemians who prey upon humanity. The man who marries and takes his wife from the stage is, of course, as much removed from comment as any other private gentleman who marries any lady. But the husband of the actress who remains upon the stage, even against his will, must expect curiosity and criticism, especially if his wife is a popular favorite. It is quite

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ACTORS AND OLD AGE.

fresh in the recollection of play-goers that when the charming and universally esteemed Jean Davenport became the wife of Mr.-afterward General-Lander, she left the stage and remained off until after his death, and then went back in defiance of the opposition of his family. Mrs. Lander had reason for thus placing upon the playbills the honored name of one of the most exclusive and respected of the old families of Massachusetts, in the fact that she had given up, with a noble generosity, a large fortune to our sick and wounded soldiers during the war, and had thus reduced herself to comparative poverty. Miss Kate Bateman, a lady whose private worth and social virtues have gained her the esteem of two hemispheres, married Dr. Crow, a surgeon, but remained on the stage in obedience to the protest of the world against the eclipse of her rare genius. Miss Kate Terry, of the English stage, was wedded to a rich linen-draper, who removed her at once to the wealthy sphere she is henceforth to occupy."

The gentleman who wrote the above has since married. an actress himself!

Players are celebrated for the extreme age which they often reach, and the excellent health which they generally maintain.

It is rare for an actor or actress whose private habits are good, to lose his or her physical or mental powers early. The cases in which players have become insane are so few that they are celebrated.

One of the saddest of these cases was that of poor Marian Macarthy, an actress who was made insane by an excess of brain-work. Various causes of her insanity have been given; the real cause was simply overwork. She was not possessed of a naturally strong mind, but accident placed her in the position of "leading lady” at a theatre where it was her duty, in order to maintain her

position, to commit to memory a number of heavy Shakespearean parts in rapid succession. Never having been drilled by slow and healthful degrees to such prodigious mental exercise-her memory all untrained to the task-she still struggled desperately with it, and at last, poor girl! broke down completely. She fell to babbling wildly on the stage, and was taken home a maniac.

Her home, so long thereafter as she lived, was in the Indiana State Lunatic Asylum. Here she fancied herself before the public, and smiled, and sang, and spouted Shakespeare, and bowed her acknowledgments to her shadowy audience, hour on hour, day after day. It was a pitiful spectacle.

An hour or two previous to her death, reason returned. Her distorted features were restored to the gentle beauty which had so often called forth the plaudits of the gallery and the bouquets of the boxes. She opened her eyes once more on the world of reality, and then closed them forever.

"She is dead and gone,

At her head a grass-green turf,

At her heels a stone."

The asylum in which she was confined was the first retreat for the insane that I ever visited, and I shall never forget the profound impression it made upon me. I had heard accounts of the strange doings of the afflicted beings who dwell in these abodes, but they had ranked in my mind with the Arabian Nights and Esop's fables. Did some of these poor people really deck their brows with straw, and fancy themselves like Lear, "every inch a king?" Were there really professional gentlemen there, men of great intellect, quite unimpaired except for some one mania which vitiated the whole?

Yes, there were just such poor beings here, and others who were quite as mournful to look upon.

"Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?" asked I, as I stood within these halls.

It was answered that many of the insane are cured, though many more remain permanently demented, while still others die in the asylum, as poor Marian did.

It is very rare to find professional people of any other class who retain the ability to practice their profession to so advanced an age as actors have often done.

Two notable examples of this, still living, are Déjazet, the French comedienne, and "old Holland," the veteran comedian of Wallack's theatre in New York-more lately of the Fifth avenue theatre.

Mr. Holland must be now, as I judge, not less than seventy years old; and still he plays nightly with a sprightliness and gayety which many of his juniors might

envy.

Of Déjazet, one of the most interesting descriptions I ever read was that which was recently printed in the Galaxy. "It was about ten years ago that I first saw Déjazet, and she was then somewhat beyond the age of sixty. It was the first night of her resumption of 'GentilBernard,' and half the fauteuils were filled with the best known representatives of literature and art. Most eager and expectant among these, I remember, was Victorien Sardou, who at that time, lost no opportunity of testifying his gratitude to the friend who had exerted herself so assiduously in assisting him to the position he had recently gained. The preliminary vaudeville was endured with less weariness than usual, the seats of Déjazet's theatre being so benificently arranged as to allow moderate freedom of action to their occupants. In most French places of amusement the accommodations provided for the spectator are pretty nearly as comfortable, not quite, as a pillory. If he dilate unduly with emotion over one of Jane Essler's tearful scenes, he exceeds the limit assigned