In Pinero’s capital farce of “The Magistrate” _Mrs. Posket_, solicitous to conceal her age, addresses to her friend _Colonel Lukyn_ an earnest adjuration relative to an impending interview with her husband: “Don’t give him _dates_; keep anything like _dates_ away from him!” Belasco’s aversion to fixed facts fully equals that of the distressed lady, though, in his case, it is temperamental instead of secretive. “The vagabond,” he writes, “always says ’at this time,’ whether it be to-day or to-morrow, and, like Omar, he ’lets the credit go.’ The incidents that now come to mind are a little confused as to their chronological order, but what does it matter, if the _impression_ is true!” It “matters,” unfortunately, much,--because confusion and apparent contradiction which result from lack of accuracy and order sometimes tend to create an unjust belief that related incidents, actually authentic, are untrue. It has, moreover, rendered protracted and tedious almost beyond patience the work of compiling and arranging a clear, sequent, authoritative account of Belasco’s long and extraordinary career. I have ascertained divers particulars of his early experiences and alliances (verifying them as _facts_ by diligent search and inquiry in many directions), which, however, I have not invariably been able to place in exact chronological order and which may conveniently be summarized here.
Perhaps the most important single event of the first decade of Belasco’s theatrical life was his employment in a responsible position at Baldwin’s Academy of Music. But during about a year and a half prior to his first engagement there, and also during about the same length of time subsequent to it, he gained much valuable knowledge, in association with various players, acting in “the lumber districts” of Oregon and Washington; in Victoria and Nevada, and in many California towns, including Oakland, Sacramento, Petaluma, Stockton, Marysville, San José, etc. Wandering stars, of varying magnitude, with whom he thus appeared include Sallie Hinckley and Mrs. Frank Mark Bates (respectively, aunt and mother of Blanche Bates), Amy Stone, Ellie Wilton, Charles R. Thorne, Sr., Mary Watson, Annie Pixley, Fanny Morgan Phelps, Frank I. Fayne, Gertrude Granville, Laura Alberta, Katie Pell, and the old California minstrel, “Jake” Wallace. With Miss Pell and Wallace he appeared in the smaller towns of California