I am needed every moment during these daily rehearsals, but I must steal a second to wish you were here at this instant. There’s a combat going on, of the most furious & earnest nature, between two men in every-day clothes, who rave & roar & fell each other with imaginary chairs & shoot each other with imaginary pistols & pretend to fall & die in agony & be thrown into the Stanislaus river———& by George all the other actors & actresses sit within 6 feet of them & calmly converse about the reasonable price of board in Baltimore!