ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 31 May 1880, Page 2

ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

1 . » . — i (From English Files.) s Mr John M'Cullough gives an enferfc taining account of his first leanings ' toward the drama. It was in a Philadel* ' phia shop, as related in the News of that > city, that the boy John began bis work- > .ing life as an apprentice In chair tusking. 1 In the same shop was an intelligent old mechanic named Burke, whose busy life 1 bad been brightened by much hard read* ' ing, and who was continually reciting 1 s bakespeare, greatly to the boy's delight. Burkes favourite amusement, when slightly enlivened by the wine cup, was to ranrder young M'OuUough with a paint brush, and then recite with esceedng great effect over bim Mark Anfonv's speech over the dead Camr. » I became perfectly enraptured with the man,' says the actor, * and made such a patient aca commodating corpse for him, he finally made me a present of a copy of Shakespeare. From that day the doom of tbe chair making business, so far as I was concerned, was sealed for ever.' Mr Cbarles Dickens (sou of tbe novelist) and Joseph Hatton bave written a four-aot drama on 'the Mystery of Edwin Drood,' in .which tbe murderer of Edwin Drood,' naturally rums out to be Jasper, choir master. Tbe play ends with tbe exciting scene in the opium» smoking den, where Jasper beholds in a dream the details of his crime and arrest wbich are also made visible to the audience, and wakes to find the realisation of the climax of his vision in the entrance of the officer of justice.