The only dramatic performances known in the wild region where I passed some of my early years, are given by companies of strolling players who usually give their classic entertainments in a barn, have a piece of carpet for a drop curtain, four tallow candles for footlights, and who generally go out of town in the night without paying their Tavern bills.

Almost every Drama performed by them, requires more people to represent it than are contained in the entire troupe; the services of a crowd of aspiring country boys are secured for soldiers, citizens, robbers, and other personages who don't have to say anything; but there is still a large gap which can only be filled by the "doubling" of several parts by one performer. Hence it is by no means unusual in the "tragedy of Richard III." to see King Henry, after being deliberately despatched by Gloster in the first act, reappear in the second as the Duke of Buckingham, and then, after his supposed decapitation in obedience to the ferocious order of Richard, "Off with his head," come back in the final scenes, equipped in a full suit of mail, as the Earl of Richmond, and avenging his double murder by killing the "crook-backed tyrant" with a broadsword after a prolonged struggle.

And in Macbeth, King Duncan, after being carved up by his treacherous kinsman with two white handled butcher-knives, returns as Hecate in the witch scenes, and afterwards as court physician to Lady M., besides which he generally blows the flourishes on the trumpet for the entrances of the King, beats the bass drum, and attends to the sheet-iron thunder.

I have always had a passion for theatricals, and was at one time of my variegated existence much more intimately connected with the stage than at present—and on reaching this city I felt, of course, a great desire to behold again the theatre, with all its brilliant fascinations—the light, the music, the varied scenery comprising gardens, chambers, cottages, mountains, "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces," bar-rooms, churches, huts and hovels—to look again upon the glass jewels, the tinselled robes of mimic royalty, the pasteboard banquets and molasses wine, and all the glory, "pride, pomp and circumstance" and humbug which I once "knew so well," "et quorum magna pars fui."

So, with my trusty friends, Damphool and Bull Dogge, I wended my way to the Metropolitan Theatre No. 1, to see and hear the distinguished Mr. Rantanrave Hellitisplit, the notorious American tragedian, in his great, original, unapproachable, inconceivable, inexplicable, incomprehensible part of "What a bore O, the last of the Vollypogs."

I had heard so much of this great actor in this particular part, that I expected to behold nothing less than the "Eighth wonder of the world."

Opera glasses were continually levelled at us by people who, impelled by a laudable curiosity, were anxious to see all that could be seen. (Damphool says, that when you see a woman with one of these implements, you may be sure she wants to be looked at—and called my attention to the confirmatory fact, that all the ladies with the finest busts, and the best developed forms, wore their dresses the lowest in the neck, and sported the biggest opera glasses). (Bull Dogge asserts that they were invented by the author of "Staring made Easy," and "A Treatise on the Use of Globes.")

After a season of tramping by the intelligent audience, which seemed, by its measured regularity, to intimate that they had learned the motion in the treadmill, the bell jingled and the members of the orchestra entered, one by one.

The audience endured the prolonged tuning of the instruments, conducted in a masterly manner by the leader of the band, the music got "good ready" for a fair start, and at the word "go" they went.

Could not critically analyse the uproar, but it seemed to be composed of these elements: a predominance of drum and cymbals—a liberal allowance of flute and horn—a spasmodic sprinkling of trombone—a small quantity of oboe, and a great deal of fiddle. The tumult was directed by the leader, who waved the fiddle over his head, jumped up and down upon his seat, kicked up his heels, disarranged his shirt collar, threw his arms wildly about, stamped, made faces, and conducted himself as if he was dancing a frantic hornpipe for the gratification of the crazy whims of an audience of Bedlamites.

At length the curtain went up—two men came on and said something, then two others came on and did something—then the scene changed, and some others came on and listened to a shabby-looking general, who seemed to be their "magnus Apollo" and who certainly was very long-winded.

Nothing decisive, however, came to pass until the long-expected entrance of the great Hellitisplit himself eventuated.

I must confess that I was awed by the terrific yet serene majesty of his appearance. When I saw the tragic, codfishy expression of his eyes, I was surprised; when I observed the flexibility of his capacious mouth, opening and shutting, like a dying mud sucker, I was amazed. When my eye turned to his fingers, which worked and clutched, as if feeling for coppers in a dark closet, I was wonder-stricken—but when my attention was called to the magnitude of his legs, I was fairly electrified with admiration, and could not forbear asking Bull Dogge if those calves were capable of locomotion.

What-a-bore-O, is supposed to be an Indian Chief, and although it is the prevailing impression that Indians are beardless, the face of this celebrated performer proved this opinion to be a physiological fallacy.

For upon his chin he wore a tuft of hair, a round black hirsute knob, neither useful nor ornamental, but which looked as if somebody had hit him in the face with a blacking-brush, and a piece had stuck to his lower jaw.

The admiring audience, who had kicked up perfect young earthquake when he came on, only ceased when he squared himself, put out his arm and prepared to speak.

That voice! Ye Gods! that voice! It went through gradations that human voice never before attempted, imitating by turns the horn of the City Hall Gabriel, the shriek of the locomotive, the soft and gentle tones of a forty-horse-power steam sawmill, the loving accents of the scissor-grinder's wheel, the amorous tones of the charcoal-man, the rumble of the omnibus, the cry of the driver appertaining thereto—rising from the entrancing notes of the infuriated house-dog to the terrific cry of the oyster vender—causing the "supes" to tremble in their boots, making the fiddlers look around for some place of safety, and moving the assembled multitude to echo back the roar, feebly, it is true, but still with all their puny strength.

(Bull Dogge says he got that awful voice by eating pebble-stone lunches, like the man in the book.)

Several times during the piece I was much affected—when he wound his arms round his wife, stuck his head over her shoulder, and kissed the back of her neck—when he made a grand exit, with three stamps, a hop, a run, and two long straddles—when he talked grand about the thunder, shook his fist at the man in the flies—when he killed the soldiers in the council room, shouted for them to "come one and all," and then ran away for fear they would—when he swore at the man who did not give him his cue—when he knelt down and said grace over his dead boy, and then got up and stuck his wife with the butcher-knife; but at no part of the whole piece was I so impressed with his pathetic power, his transcendent genius, as when he laid his hand solemnly on his stomach, and said "What a bore O, cannot lie!" (Damphool asked, in a whisper, if Othello's occupation was gone).

And at the death scene, when he was shot, I was again touched to the heart; first he wabbled about like a top-heavy liberty pole in a high wind; then he stuck out one leg, and wiggled it, after the manner of a galvanic bull-frog; then sat down on the floor, opened his eyes and looked around; then grappled an Indian on one side, clutched a soldier on the other, struggled to his feet, staggered about like a drunken Dutchman, made a rush forwards, then a leap sideways, stiffened out like a frozen pig, collapsed like a wet dish-cloth, exerted himself till his face was the color of an underdone beefsteak, then sank back into the arms of the Indians, whispered to let him down easy, rolled up the whites of his eyes, settled himself to die—concluded to have a parting curse at the surrounding people, took a long swear, laid down, and with a noise in his throat like castanets, a couple of vigorous kicks and a feeble groan, gave up the ghost.

Bull Dogge asserted that he would resuscitate, brush the dust off his legs (take some gin and sugar, and come out and make a speech), all of which he did; the butcher boys in the gallery (Damphool says Hellitisplit commenced life as a respectable butcher-boy, but has degenerated into the man he is,) gave three cheers, Hellitisplit opened his mouth four times, shut it thrice (he went off with it wide open), and backed off with a grace which we may suppose would be exhibited by a mudturtle on the tight-rope.

Damphool was in ecstacies—Bull Dogge asked me how I liked the "great American," &c. I replied that I knew not which most to admire, his euphonious voice, or his tremendous straddle, but that (notwithstanding the late appropriation of the name by a rival show-shop), I was ready to maintain with the butcher boys that there was but one Metropolitan Theatre, and Hellitisplit is its profit.