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ing the songs, and sent me on the stage after 11 o'clock at night, and after a five-act comedy. I was a good deal put out at this. I thought it would ruin my chances, and to a certain extent it did, the audience being tired and yawning, many leaving the theatre before I came on. So well did somebody manage, I won't say who, that after a few nights of this I did not act at all, and when I appeared again it was once more under unfair treatment, as I believe. Mr. Hudson, who was the leading comedian then, was taken ill and could not play Dazzle in "London Assurance" which had then been revived. Mr. Boucicault himself attended the rehearsals, and they cast me for Dazzle, a part I had never attempted, and which had all the prestige of Mr. Charles Mathews's great name. had not been allowed to play for some weeks, and I was put on the stage with Mr. Farren, Mr. Buckstone, and all these people around me who knew every turn and twist of the business of the comedy; and I naturally appeared under the greatest possible disadvantages. I think that is about all I did do.

James Wallack, Jr.

In the meantime Mr. George H. Barrett, who had come to England to make engagements for a new theatre which was building on Broadway, corner of Anthony Street, New York, and which was to be called "The Broadway," went to the Haymarket, saw me, and thought he had found the very thing he wanted for America. He came to my mother's house and asked, "When does this season end?" I told him, and he said, Well, now, what are you getting here?" "Six pounds a week," a very good salary in those days. He replied: "Well, I will give you eight, if you will go to the States." It was a great temptation, because it secured to me the first line of comedy and because my father was then in America; so I closed with him at once, and at the end of the

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Haymarket season sailed viâ the Cunard line, which then went to Boston only. There I saw my father, who was just about to start for England.

This was the cause of my coming to America as an actor. I opened the Broadway Theatre, playing Sir Charles Coldstream, fell through a trap on the first night and nearly got killed. The stage had been built in a very hurried manner. Jumping on the trap, it gave way and I went through, but fortunately had presence of mind enough to catch myself by my elbows. I picked myself up uninjured and had one of the greatest receptions I ever remember. I was the success of the evening, so the newspapers said. In those days I lived on Broadway at a boarding-house kept by a Mrs. Black near Broome Street. Wallack's Theatre, strangely enough, afterward stood on that very spot.

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The Broadway Theatre was built by, or for, one Colonel Alvah Mann. The first season was a losing one. There was a succession of managers, things were going very badly, and Mr. George Barrett finally gave up the stage management, which devolved upon Mr. James Wallack, Jr., my cousin; it then came into the hands of Mr. George Vandenhoff; at last it came to Mr. William Rufus Blake, and then was produced Boucicault's Old Heads and Young Hearts," with Mr. Blake as Jesse Rural. The drama, which had never been done here before, brought up the fortunes of the theatre again. The next season Mr. Blake was still stage-manager and we repeated various plays. Mr. Forrest had a very successful engagement there during which I played Cassio to his Othello. Then James Anderson played an engagement and I acted with him. I supported Forrest, too, in the "Broker of Bogota," and that was the first idea I got that I could do some serious work. The fortunes of the theatre went down once more until at last an actor named George Andrews got hold of a book which was exciting and interesting the whole town. It was Dumas's "Count of Monte Cristo." Andrews made a dramatization of it, and offered it as a holiday piece, to be brought out on Christmas night. Mr. Blake came to me and told me about it. I said it was

capable of making an excellent drama. He replied: "The drama is made; and you must play Monte Cristo." "Good Heavens, I cannot!" said I. "You must do this or the theatre will close," he answered; "we have no one else to do it." I was in a horrible fright, for I had never attempted anything of the kind; but I said: "Very well, I will try it and if I fail it will not be my fault." The consequence was an immense successone of the first plays that rivalled "Richard III." and "London Assurance" by a run of one hundred nights. Fanny Wallack, my cousin, played Haidee, and Mr. Fredericks played Fernand. Hadaway was in the piece and played Caderousse. It was the great hit of the season, and the thing that saved the theatre from bankruptcy. It was from Monte Cristo that I got what celebrity I ever had in melodramatic characters, and singular to say, most of the greatest successes I ever had were in parts which were a mixture of the serious and comic, like "The Romance of a Poor Young Man," ," "Jessie Brown," "Rosedale," and "The Streets of New York."

George Vandenhoff.

I first met George Vandenhoff at the Broadway Theatre, where it seems he had made an engagement with Colonel Mann, in which he stipulated that he should not be held inferior to anyone in the company. In other words he was to be strictly the leading man. When Mr. Blake came into the stage management he advocated making a star theatre of it, and among other stars he engaged was my cousin, Mr. James Wallack, Jr. The opening play was "Othello," in which Wallack was cast for Othello, as a matter of course, and Vandenhoff for Iago. About half past six, the curtain being supposed to rise at seven, there was no Mr. Vandenhoff in the theatre. They sent a message to his lodgings or his hotel, or wherever he was, to know whether he was aware of the lateness of the hour. The messenger came back and reported that Mr. Vandenhoff was out

VOL. IV. 44

and had left no word as to when he would return. The time approached for the commencement of the performance, Mr. Wallack was waiting, dressed for Othello, I was waiting dressed for Cassio, which I was to play that night; everybody was waiting, dressed for everything. No Mr. Vandenhoff, no message, until about five minutes before the curtain should have risen, when a note did arrive at last from him, explaining that as his name in the bills and advertisements did not appear in equal prominence with Mr. Wallack's he did not intend to play at all. There was naturally a great deal of indignation expressed on the part of the management; the audience were becoming impatient, and eventually Mr. Blake went upon the stage before the curtain to explain the cause of the delay. He spoke to this effect:

"Ladies and gentlemen; I am very sorry to appear before you as an apologist. We shall give you the play, but without Mr. Vandenhoff, who, not ten minutes ago, sent word that he would not act because his name did not appear in the bills in equal type with Mr. James Wallack's. It has been left to the management to give you an acceptable substitute in the person of Mr. Dyott, who, at this singularly short notice, will appear as lago. [Great applause.] We have given you the best possible remedy for the disappointment, and we leave it to you to give Mr. Vandenhoff his just deserts whenever he shall appear before you again."

The result of this was a very successful performance of the tragedy, and a challenge from Mr. Vandenhoff to Mr. Blake. Mr. Thomas Placide consented to act as Mr. Blake's second. The affair, however, was patched up by the interference of mutual friends, and no blood was shed.

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William Rufus Blake.

Mr. Blake, off the stage as well as on, was a positive epitome of fun and humor. There was a gentleman in the company named Hind, who came to him one day with the pomposity which I have gene

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carries the flag of our nation, and I have always, in that particular scene in which I carried it, been accustomed to sing The Star Spangled Banner.'" Mr. Blake replied:

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"But a song here is entirely out of place; it will be an interruption to the course of the play, and on this occasion I cannot consent to its introduction. We cannot sacrifice the play on that account." Mr. Jones replied:

"Mr. Blake, if I am to play this part I must sing 'The Star Spangled Banner.' My name has invariably been in the bills with the addition of this line: In which he will sing 'The Star Spangled Banner.'" Mr. Blake persevered in his denial of the request, when Jones drew himself up to his full height, which, by the bye, was not above five feet four, and majestically said:

"Mr. Blake, I wish it to be recorded that I in

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PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN POLITICS.

By Hugh McCulloch.

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ORD DERBY, in a speech delivered at Liverpool, in 1872, made the striking remark that the increase of wealth in Great Britain, within the present century, far exceeded the increase in the preceding 1800 years. This wealth had been chiefly created by her extensive commerce and her manufactures, in which for many years she excelled all other nations combined. The gain in the United States has been the result of agricultural and manufacturing industry, and of the increased value of land, and this increase in the value of land is in a very great degree attributable to canals and railroads, chiefly the latter, without which the most of the great West would have remained a wilderness, and our large cities would have been unimportant towns. It is hardly too much to say, that the United States are twenty times richer than they were a half century ago. The whole world has, indeed, felt the influences that have been at work within this brief period of its history in pushing onward modern civilization. A large part of it has, in fact, been rejuvenated within a half century. Nearly all of the mechanical inventions, now so indispensable, such as railroads, iron ships, telegraphs, agricultural implements, labor-saving machinery of all kinds, have come into use within less than two generations, but in no part of the world have such changes taken place as in the United States. Within the period named, the population of the United States has been more than twice doubled. Sixteen States have been added to the Union, and what was then the far distant West, has become the centre of population and political power.

Of all the changes that have taken place within the last half century, none has been more marked and decided than

that in ships. Until the Cunard Company, in 1840, sent their first steamship the Britannia, of thirteen hundred tons, from Liverpool to Boston, sailing vessels built of wood, had the command of the seas. There were, it is true, a few steamships constructed before that time. In 1819, the Savannah, with steam as well as sails, went from Savannah in Georgia, to St. Petersburgh, stopping on her way out at England, and completing her run from St. Petersburgh back to Savannah in twenty-six days; so that the honor of sending the first steamship across the ocean from the United States, belongs to a Southern State. In 1825, the Enterprise, properly so called, went from England to Calcutta, and in 1838 the Sirius, of seven hundred tons, and the Great Western, of thirteen hundred and forty tons, came to New York from Liverpool. These, however, were experiments. Regular ocean traffic by steamships did not fairly commence until the establishment of the Cunard line in 1840. From that time the construction of steamships went rapidly on, and traffic upon the seas went as rapidly from sailing vessels to steamers. The great motive power of the world upon water as well as upon land, is steam. Upon the Great Lakes and upon the Ocean, its value is appreciated; but upon the rivers only, can its great advantages be fully understood. Before I went to the West in 1833 and for some time after, the business upon the Mississippi and its tributaries was chiefly carried on by flat-boats, which were floated down to New Orleans by the current, and broken up and sold for lumber after their cargoes had been disposed of; or by barges which, after they had been unloaded at the levee, were towed back to their shipping points by watermen, a race that has long since disappeared. A whole season was consumed by these barges in a single trip down and back from the Ohio and Upper Mississippi to New Orleans.

Steamboats when they came into full

play changed all this, and opened for settlement a country as large as that which lies east of the Alleghanies. The ocean and lake traffic might have been carried on by sailing vessels, but upon no rivers, except the great rivers of South America, could sails be used. In our harbors one now sees a few small sailing vessels, and here and there a three masted schooner, which reminds him of the Baltimore Clippers, but these are engaged in a coast wise trade, and are being rapidly superseded by small steamers. In 1876, the last time I was in Liverpool, I saw scarcely a single sailing vessel among the hundreds that filled her docks. The age is utilitarian; it is the most useful that is sought for, what pays the best is the desideratum. The sailing ship is a thing of beauty. Nothing to me is so beautiful as a full rigged ship with all sails set, as she moves before the wind; but she has ceased to pay. A steamship is a thing of power. There is nothing about her which is beautiful, but she is time-saving, and hence her superiority over sailing ves

sels.

Next to steam, iron and steel have been the great factors in the revolution of the last half century in ship building. Fifty years ago, vessels of all descriptions, naval as well as those that were used in trade, were built of wood. Now iron and steel are almost exclusively used. There are a few small sailing vessels being built of wood for home trade, but a wooden ship of war can only be seen among the hulks. The fight in Hampton Roads between the little Monitor and the Virginia, sealed the fate of wooden war ships. What a revolution in ship building that first contest between iron-clads produced! It literally made valueless the navies of the world, upon which countless millions had been expended. In itself considered, it was in comparison with hundreds of other naval battles, an unimportant affair, but by enabling the Government to maintain the blockade, it did much for the preservation of the Union, and by showing how powerless wooden ships would be in contests with ironclads, it created a system of naval architecture in which all the commercial nations are now experimenting. Each is trying to construct ships

that will attain the greatest speed, carry the heaviest guns, and resist the heaviest shot. Their value will be tested in the next great European war.

The decline in its shipping is the great humiliation of the United States. Less than half a century ago, it was second only to Great Britain, with strong indications that it would soon be her superior as a maritime power. The best ships in the world were then built in the United States, chiefly in New England, and our ship-yards not only supplied the home demand, which was very large but to a considerable extent the foreign demand also. Now, except for the home trade, the building of ships has substantially ceased.

It makes one who saw the ship-yards, along the New England coast half century ago sad as he sees them now. A few steam-ships are being built there and in the other Atlantic States for coast-wise or West Indian and South American trade, but none for the European. In ship-building and ship owning, the United States are behind nations that, a few years ago, were not known for either. The carrying trade between the old world and the new is in the hands of Europeans. It is their ships that are crowded with Americans who are constantly visiting the old world on business or for pleasure; it is their ships that bring emigrants to our shores; their ships that carry our cotton, our wheat, our beef and pork, our tobacco and petroleum and what not, to foreign markets. We no longer share in the glory and the gain which attend upon maritime enterprise. The decline of American shipping commenced with the substitution of iron for wooden ships. It was hastened by our refusal to permit our ship owners to protect their ships by a foreign flag during the late war, and the finishing blow was given to it by a tariff which, by taxing the materials that are used in the construction of ships, made them too costly to invite capital in that direction and forced it into manufactures. That the United States have been enormously enriched by their manufactures, is undeniable, and it is equally undeniable that their rapid growth in manufacturing industries is very largely attributable to high duties

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