A Veteran Actor.

Major Horace McVicker tells an amusing story of the veteran Frank Rea, who is, perhaps, the oldest actor now on earth. About four years ago, Rea came on from Denver, and took up his abode in New York. He was aged and old-fashioned, but his ambition was as big as ever; and he undertook, with intense enthusiasm, every suburban engagement that was offered him by kindly disposed managers and theatrical bureaus. One time he was sent down to Sunbury, Penn., with a scrub-company, to give the natives a season of melodrama; and Rea himself was cast as the first old man. After the first night’s performance, Rea, accompanied by one of his fellow-actors, strode into one of the Sunbury saloons, and advanced toward the bar with the inevitable precision and unfaltering intrepidity of Mary Queen of Scots going to execution. Laying a dime down upon the counter, he inquired of the barkeeper, in impressive tones, “Tell me, my good sir, what will that buy?”

“That,” answered the barkeeper, riveting his basilisk gaze upon the weather-beaten coin, “that will buy one glass of whiskey, or two glasses of beer.”

The old actor looked searchingly into his companion’s face as if he hoped to discover there some relief from the perplexity which surged in tumultuous 221billows through his bosom. Then he heaved a deep sigh, and, turning again to the mercenary Ganymede, he said, in the profound basso voice of a seventeenth-century tragedian, “That being the case, give us one glass of beer, and half a glass of whiskey!”