I finally consented, and the next moment I found myself standing behind the footlights and in front of an audience for the first time in my life.

Taking these and other things into consideration I finally resolved to resign my seat in the legislature and try my luck behind the footlights.

[Illustration: BEHIND THE FOOTLIGHTS.]

" Gossip had it that my father always loved the theatre, though perhaps the Green Room better than the footlights.

And she was just saying something to Uncle Tom on her left when the bearded bloke stepped to the footlights and started making a speech.

There was a red draw curtain, footlights made with candles and biscuit tins, and so strung on a wire that at a pull, between the acts, they could be turned on the spectators.

But until that day one could fancy the romanticists and realists lambasting each other in the papers, the soldiers grinding away in their dusty camps, the pretty ladies rolling gayly down the sprinkled asphalt, and the chanteuse singing over the footlights: "Que pense le Premier Ministre?

And my part was to be merry, too, and to make the great audience laugh that I would see beyond the footlights.

A RIDE BY NIGHT Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening.

" "The particular ladder you offer to me," said Cromwell, "I have no desire to climb; I am sick of the smell of the footlights and the whole atmosphere of the theatre.

Later she showed him some of her more personal mementoes; jewels of rare beauty, expensive baubles, "testimonials," reminiscent of "evenings of honor," when admirers had surprised her in the green room while outside the audience was applauding wildly, and she, lowering her lance, and surrounded by ushers with huge bouquets, would step forward to the footlights and make her bow of acknowledgment, under a deluge of tinsel and flowers.

Seymour Hicks and Edward Knoblauch in one week wrote a play called "England Expects," which was an appeal in dramatic form for recruits, and each night the play was produced recruits crowded over the footlights.

How about footlights? Bradley.

KOEHLER, EDWARD T. Footlights up.

R70721, 29Nov50, Helen Channing Pollock (E) FOOTLIGHTS, by Rita Weiman.

R69234. Footlights.

KOEHLER, EDWARD T. Footlights up.

Footlights on a hero.

As I stood watching them all the stupendousness of the times rushed over me that you and I, who have rubbed our noses on historical monuments so often, have chased after emotions on the scenes of past heroism, and applauded mock heroics across the footlights, should be living in days like these, days in which heroism is the common act of every hour.

Each saluted and made his bow, as if he had come on to do a turn before the footlights.

But I confess to absolute surprise, as I read on, and learned that your career was to lead you, not through Lovers' Lane, not before the footlights, but along the hurly-burly byways and highways of American newspaper work, beginning with interviews and reporting.

As for me, I made up my mind to stand in the slides, so that I could see the contessina; for Nino had whispered to me that she had not yet recognised him, though she stared hard across the footlights.

Then she gave a strange little cry, so that many people in the house looked towards her; and she leaned far back in the shadow of the deep box, while the reflected glare of the footlights just shone faintly on her features, making them look more like marble than ever.

The silver moon just peeping over the mountain, throwing into grand relief its rugged seam-scarred sides, the calcium light; the pine trees with waving plumes, rising file on file like shrouded specters, form the stage setting; the mountain brook, on whose bosom the moon leaves a streak of molten silver, the footlights; while all the myriad voices of the night, harmoniously blended, are the orchestra.

She was an admirably charming companion before the footlights of the world's stagenot so uniformly charming behind its scenes, for her unreasonableness always and her occasional violence were very difficult to deal with.