"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform,"
we venture to pray for His mercy upon the guilty soul! who may have repented and confessed his manifold sins and offences during those awful hours of suffering before the end came.
And "God shutteth not up His mercies forever in displeasure!" We can only shiver and turn our thoughts away from the bright light that went out in such utter darkness. Poor, guilty, unhappy John Wilkes Booth!
Mr. R. E. J. Miles--His two Horses, and our Woful Experience with the Substitute "Wild Horse of Tartary."
But there, just as I start to speak of my third season, I seem to look into a pair of big, mild eyes that say: "Can it be that you mean to pass me by? Do you forget that 'twas I who turned the great sensation scene of a play into a side-splitting farce?" And I shake my head and answer, truthfully: "I cannot forget, I shall never forget your work that night in Columbus, when you appeared as the 'fiery, untamed steed' (may Heaven forgive you) in 'Mazeppa.'"
Mr. Robert E. J. Miles, or "All the Alphabet Miles," as he was frequently called, was starring at that time in the Horse Drama, doing such plays as "The Cataract of the Ganges," "Mazeppa," "Sixteen-String Jack," etc. "Mazeppa" was the favorite in Columbus, and both the star and manager regretted they had billed the other plays in advance, as there would have been more money in "Mazeppa" alone. Mr. Miles carried with him two horses; the one for the "Wild Horse of Tartary" was an exquisitely formed, satin-coated creature, who looked wickedly at you from the tail of her blazing eye, who bared her teeth savagely, and struck out with her fore-feet, as well as lashed out with the hind ones. When she came rearing, plunging, biting, snapping, whirling, and kicking her way on to the stage, the scarlet lining of her dilating nostrils and the foam flying from her mouth made our screams very natural ones, and the women in front used to huddle close to their companions, or even cover their faces.
One creature only did this beautiful vixen love--R. E. J. Miles. She fawned upon him like a dog; she did tricks like a dog for him, but she was a terror to the rest of mankind, and really it was a thrilling scene when _Mazeppa_ was stripped and bound, his head tail-ward, his feet mane-ward, to the back of that maddened beast. She seemed to bite and tear at him, and when set free she stood straight up for a dreadful moment, in which she really endangered his life, then, with a wild neigh, she tore up the "runs," as if fiends pursued her, with the man stretched helplessly along her inky back. The curtain used to go up again and again--it was so very effective.