He is the chief performer in a semi-serious, and half jocular, production, yclept "The Honest Blacksmith." Bob shoes a horse on the stage, spars some, and does a lot of un usual things. All this is happening in San Francisco. • • » Uncharitable people remark that Melba is, to say the least of it, not remarkable for humility. Why should she be when the following is one of the least of the nice things said about her : Imagine a delicious voice as pure as crystal alighting in the lips of the cantatrioe with the aerial lightness of a bird. Pearls dropping from her mouth without the slightest effort." 1 iris is what a blase French critic had to say. • * * It is now the custom in some hotels for the "boots" to bring you your San dow developer with your pedal envel opes and shaving water in the morning. One gentleman, of eccentric disposition, in Australia recently, owes his "boots" a debt of gratitude. He had intended going out of this world per rope manu factured from a sheet, as the torn na ture of that article proclaimed, but the advent of his morning developer obvi ated the necessity of committing suicide in that soft goods way. • ♦ • Thus the "Bulletin" — "Just as bad as stage-fright is a sudden blankness of memory. Nance O'Neil, when playing 'Fedora," in Melbourne, had her mind become a blank in the middle of a speech. O'Neil is a plucky woman. When "Lady Inger" failed in Melbourne she fought a hostile audience for two hours and a-half— fought herself to a standstill, so that when the curtain fell. O'Neill fell, too, and had to be carried off the stage to her dressing-room. But, when her memory left her in "Fedora/ Nance lost all her faculties temporarily. She could not even hear the prompter, but sat looking before her, with eves growing bigger and bigger with hysteri cal terror. Harry Plimmer, who was oa with her. saved the situation by com ink quite close to her, grasping her wrist and telling her the lines. 