STAGE POISONING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 5276, 18 January 1879, Page 3

STAGE POISONING.

A romantic chapter in tho annals of the amateur drama has just beeu played at Ofen (says the European Mail). The beautiful daughter of a manufacturer imagined that sho could trace in herself tho germs of a considerable dramatic genius, and urged her parents to allow her to adopt the stago as a profession. The prosaic elders refused their consent, but permitted her to satisfy her aspirations as far as possible by taking leading parts in the numerous dilettante play-act-in"s which are a favourite amusement of local society. She performed with great applause such parts as the Louise in "Kabalo and Liebie," tho Kitty in "KatcbehenvonHeilbronn," and the like, and soon became much in demand. It happened that in nearly all the dramas in which she had to play the lovely heroine, a handsome young gentleman, of good family, who was also a little stagestruck, played the part of the lover, 'theatrical love, on her side at least, developed into the actual human passion, while on his side it never passed tho boundary which severs representation from reality. Her passion, which was returned so warmly upon the boards, was met coldly in the .salon and at the supper-table ; perhaps it was not oven suspected by its object. The young lady determined that life without him as life-long partner was not worth living, and she resolved to end it in a manner worthy of her two-fold passion for the drama and the handsome amateur. She procured the adoption of a tragedy in which the heroine poisons herself for love, and dies in the arms of the beloved. The misa en scene waa admirable. Tbe girl played the poisoning scene with such an impassioned and lifelike reality that the spectators were enraptured, and perhaps concluded that ber parents were to blame fur withholding such remarkable gifts from a wider public. But as the convulsive writhings prescribed by the part seemed to have no end, and the heroine W9nt on dying, but would not die, to the perplexity and consternation of the dramatic hero, the observers began to suspect that something was amiss. A physician, who was among the ' guests, sprang upon the stage, and seized ' the chalice of poison which the heroine

had drained. It contained some weak solution of phosphorus, fortunately too weak to be fundamentally mischievous, and the immediate application of anantidoto set everything right. Three days after, it is reported, she declared herself healed of both her passions—for the stage and the amateur.