the famous O.P. riots the scale agreed upon was:  Boxes, seven shillings; pit, three shillings; galleries, two shillings and one shilling; with half-price at nine o’clock.  In later times these charges have been considerably reduced.  Half price has been generally abolished, however, and many rows of the pit have been converted into stalls at seven or ten shillings each.  Altogether, it may perhaps be held that in Western London, although theatrical entertainments have been considerably cheapened, they still tax the pockets of playgoers more severely than need be.

Country managers would seen to have ruled their scale of charges in strict accordance with the means of their patrons; to have been content, indeed, with anything they could get from the provincial playgoers.  Mr. Bernard, the actor, in his “Retrospections,” makes mention of a strolling manager, once famous in the north of England and in Ireland, and known popularly as Jemmy Whitely, who, in impoverished districts, was indifferent as to whether he received the public support in money or “in kind.”  It is related of him that he would take meat, fowl, vegetables, &c., and pass in the owner and friends for as many admissions as the food was worth.  Thus very often on a Saturday his treasury resembled a butcher’s warehouse, rather than a banker’s.  At a village on the coast the inhabitants brought him nothing but fish; but as the company could not subsist without its concomitants of bread, potatoes, and spirits, a general appeal was made to his stomach and sympathies, and some alteration in the terms of admission required.  Jemmy, accordingly, after admitting nineteen persons one evening for a shad apiece, stopped the twentieth, and said, “I beg your pardon, my darling, I am extremely sorry to refuse you; but if we eat any more fish, by the powers, we shall all be turned into mermaids!”

A famous provincial manager, or “manageress,” was one Mrs. Baker, concerning whom curious particulars are related in the “Memoirs of Thomas Dibdin,” and in the “Life of Grimaldi, the Clown.”  The lady owned theatres at Canterbury, Rochester, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells, Faversham, Deal, and other places, but was understood to have commenced her professional career in connection with a puppet-show, or even the homely entertainment of Punch and Judy.  But her industry, energy, and enterprise were of an indomitable kind.  She generally lived in her theatres, and rising early to accomplish her marketing and other household duties, she proceeded to take up her position in the box-office, with the box-book open before her, and resting upon it “a massy silver inkstand, which, with a superb pair of silver trumpets, several cups, tankards, and candlesticks of the same pure metal, it was her honest pride to say she had paid for with her own hard earnings.”  While awaiting the visits of those desirous to book their places for the evening, she arranged the programme of the entertainments.  Her education was far