One of the actors ran to the peep-hole in the curtain, and saw the doctor leading out the little man, who was then crying bitterly, the audience smiling and applauding him, one might say affectionately.

A bit later the doctor came to my dressing-room to apologize and to tell me the rest of it.  When the curtain had fallen, the child had begged:  “Take me out—­take me out!” and the doctor, thinking he might be ill, rose and led him out.  No sooner had they reached the door, however, than he pulled his hand away, crying:  “Quick, papa! quick! you go round the block that way, and I’ll run round this way, and we’ll be sure to find that poor lady that’s out in the cold—­just in her nighty!”

In vain he tried to explain, the child only grew more wildly excited; and finally the doctor promised, if the child would come home at once, only two blocks away, he would return and look for the lady—­in the nighty.  And he had taken the little fellow home and had seen him fling himself into his mother’s arms, and with tears and sobs tell her of the “poor lady whose husband had driven her right out into the blizzard, don’t you think, mamma, and only her nighty on; and, mamma, she hadn’t done one single bad thing—­not one!”

Poor, warm-hearted, innocent little man; he was assured later on that the lady had been found and taken to a hotel; and I hope his next play was better suited to his tender years.

In Philadelphia we had a very ludicrous interruption during the last act of “Man and Wife.”  The play was as popular as the Wilkie Collins’ story from which it had been taken, and therefore the house was crowded.

[Illustration:  Clara Morris as “Odette"]

I was lying on the bed in the darkened room, in that profound and swift-coming sleep known, alas! only to the stage hero or heroine.  The paper on the wall began to move noiselessly aside, and in the opening thus disclosed at the head of the bed, lamp-illumined, appeared the murderous faces of Delamain and Hesther Detheridge.  As the latter raised the wet, suffocating napkin that was to be placed over my face, a short, fat man in the balcony started to his feet, and broke the creepy silence with the shout:—­

“Mein Gott in Himmel! vill dey murder her alreaty?”

Some one tried to pull him down into his seat, but he struck the hand away, crying loudly, “Stob it! stob it, I say!” And while the people rocked back and forth with laughter, an usher led the excited German out, declaring all the way that “A blay vas a blay, but somedings might be dangerous even in a blay! unt dat ting vat he saw should be stobbed alreaty!” Meantime I had quite a little rest on my bed before quiet could be restored and the play proceed.

I have often wondered if any audience in the world can be as quick to see a point as is the New York audience.  During my first season in this city there was a play on at Mr. Daly’s that I was not in, but I was looking on at it.