THE

PROMPTER'S DAUGHTER.

The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door. —WORDSWORTH.

17

THE PROMPTER'S DAUGHTER.

The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door. -WORDSWORTH.

CHAPTER I.

The PromptWedding of the

Property-Room of a Theatre. Its Contents. The Property
Cradle and its Occupant. - Robin and Susan.- A Prompter's
Trials. History of the "General Utility.
er's Courtship. "Asking in Church."
Hunchbacked Prompter and the "General Utility.” The
Bride at Rehearsal. Tina. The Cricket on the Hearth.
Dot's Baby. Tina's Débût, A Touch of Nature. The
Infantile “Hit.” — Susan's Prayer in the old Property-Room.

READER, have you ever stood in the "propertyroom" of a theatre? That mysterious receptacle of gilded sceptres and tinsel crowns, of stage wealth, stage honors, and stage appliances, for the use of representative heroes and heroines? It is in the property-room of a London theatre that our story commences. The room is about nine feet square. It is windowless, and might, by the untheatrical visitor, be called a closet; but the designation rudely painted over the door forbids. The words "property-room" stand out in glaring red letters

and beneath "No admission." A gas-branch sheds its bluish light on a heterogeneous mass of objects, ranged and heaped together in disorderly-seeming order. Around three sides of the room run a set of shelves, nearly reaching to the ceiling. On the shelf nearest to the door stands a small chest, with drawers; within are portraits of absent lovers and lost children; lockets to be exhibited at some critical moment in the play; a golden-linked chain, with a heart attached,—such as Rosalind gives to Orlando, with the sweet words,

"Gentleman, wear this for me,

One out of suits with fortune, - that could give more,
But that her hand lacks means.

A rude cross, "carved by no craftsman's hand," such as St. Pierre recognizes on the neck of Mariana, and thus discovers his sister; the snuff-box which that drawer of a long bow, Claude Melnotte, declares Louis the Fourteenth gave to his great-great-grandmother; and the diamond ring with which the same veracious individual asserts the Doge of Venice married the Adriatic. Watches of various sizes, and, apparently, varying value; the countryman's turnipshaped silver time-teller, the large gold watch for the robber's booty, the glittering bauble of the dashing beau. A set of purses, of different textures,

the velvet purse of the benevolent lady, filled with golden coin, and opening easily to dispense charities; the dingy leathern purse of the miser, only unclosing to be filled; the honest-looking, wellstuffed purse of the farmer; the empty silken purse of the spendthrift. Pocket-books, swelling with