Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections

Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to learn something of another world—fairy-like in fascination, marvellous in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns, such women of splendid chill chastity, fierce ambition, thistle-down lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think of.

Perhaps if I had attempted simply to read Shakespeare at that time, I might have fallen short both in profit and in pleasure; but it was the hearing him that roused my attention. There was such music in the sound of the words, that the mind was impelled to study out their meaning. It seems to me that a human voice is to poetry what a clear even light is to a reader, making each word give up its full store of meaning.

At that time Forrest, crowned and wrapped in royal robes, was yet tottering on his throne. Charlotte Cushman was the Tragic Queen of the stage. Mr. James Murdoch, frail and aging, but still acting, was highly esteemed. Joseph Jefferson, E. L. Davenport, J. K. Hackett, Edwin Adams, John E. Owens, Dan. Setchell, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline, Mrs. D. P. Bowers, Miss Lucille Western, Miss Maggie Mitchell, Mr. and Mrs. Conway, Matilda Heron, Charles Couldock, Joseph Proctor, Mr. and Mrs. Albaugh, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, the Webb Sisters, Kate Reynolds, were all great favorites, not pausing to mention many more, while Edwin Booth, the greatest light of all, was rising in golden glory in the East.

Of the above-mentioned twenty-eight stars, eighteen acted in Shakespeare's plays. All stars played a week's engagement—many played two weeks, therefore at least twenty-four of our forty-two week season was given over to Shakespearean productions, and every actor and actress had the Bard at their tongue's tip.

In the far past the great disgrace of our profession was the inebriety of its men. At the time I write of, the severity of the managers had nearly eradicated the terrible habit, and I never saw but two of that class of brilliant actor-drunkards, beloved of newspaper story writers, who made too much of their absurd vagaries.

Looking back to the actors of '65, I can't help noticing the difference between their attitude of mind toward their profession, and that of the actor of to-day. Salaries were much smaller then, work was harder, but life was simpler. The actor had no social standing; he was no longer looked down upon, but he was an unknown quantity; he was, in short, an actor pure and simple. He had enthusiasm for his profession—he lived to act, not merely living by acting. He had more superstition than religion, and no politics at all; but he was patriotic and shouldered his gun and marched away in the ranks as cheerfully as any other citizen soldier.

But above all and beyond all else, the men and women respected their chosen profession. Their constant association of mind with Shakespeare seemed to have given them a certain dignity of bearing as well as of speech.

To-day our actors have in many cases won some social recognition, and they must therefore give a portion of their time to social duties. They are clubmen and another portion of their time goes in club lounging. They draw large salaries and too frequently they have to act in long running plays, that are made up of smartish wit and cheapest cynicism—mere froth and frivolity, while the effective smashing of the Seventh Commandment has been for so long a time the principal motif of both drama and farce, that one cannot wonder much at the general tone of flippancy prevailing among the theatrical people of to-day. They guy everything and everybody, and would jeer at their profession as readily as they would at an old man on the street wearing a last year's hat.

They are sober, they are honest, they are generous, but they seem to have grown utterly flippant, and I can't help wondering if this alteration can have come about through the change in their mental pabulum.

At all events, as I watched and listened in the old days, it seemed to me they were never weary of discussing readings, expressions, emphasis, and action. One would remark, say at a rehearsal of "Hamlet," that Macready gave a certain line in this manner, and another would instantly express a preference for a Forrest—or a Davenport—rendering, and then the argument would be on, and only a call to the stage would end the weighing of words, the placing of commas, etc.

I well remember my first step into theatrical controversy. "Macbeth" was being rehearsed, and the star had just exclaimed: "Hang out our banners on the outward walls!" That was enough—argument was on. It grew animated. Some were for: "Hang out our banners! on the outward walls the cry is still: they come!" while one or two were with the star's reading.

I stood listening and looking on and fairly sizzling with hot desire to speak, but dared not take the liberty, I stood in such awe of my elders. Presently the "old-man" turned and, noticing my eagerness, laughingly said: "Well, what is it, Clara? you'll have a fit if you don't ease your mind with speech."

"Oh, Uncle Dick," I answered, my words fairly tripping over each other in my haste. "I have a picture home, I cut it out of a paper, it's a picture of a great castle, with towers and moats and things, and on the outer walls there are men with spears and shields, and they seem to be looking for the enemy, and, Uncle Dick, the banner is floating over the high tower!"

"Where it ought to be," interpolated the old gentleman, who was English.

"So," I went on, "don't you think it ought to be read: 'Hang out our banners! on the outward walls'—the outward walls, you know, is where the lookout are standing—'the cry—is still, they come!'"

A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle Dick patted me very kindly on the shoulder, and said: "Good girl! you stick to your picture—it's right and so are you. Many people read the line that way, but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to follow."

And I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle old man's approval. But that same night I came quite wofully to grief. I had been one of the crowd of "witches"; I had also had my place at that shameless papier-maché banquet given by Macbeth to his tantalized guests, and then, being off duty, was, as usual, planted in the entrance, watching the acting of the grown-up and the grown-great. Lady Macbeth was giving the sleep-walking scene. Her method was of the old, old school. She spoke at almost the full power of her lungs, throughout that mysterious, awe-inspiring sleep-walking scene. It jarred upon my feelings—I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone, and when the memory-haunted woman roared out: "Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" I remarked, sotto voce: "Did you expect to find ink in him?"

A sharp "ahem!" right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I turned to face—oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me, and began: "Since when have the ladies of the ballet taken to criticising the work of the stars?"

Humbly enough, I said: "I beg your pardon, sir, I was just talking to myself, that was all."

But he went on: "Oh, you would not criticize a reading, unless you could better it—so pray favor us with your ideas on this speech!"

Each sneering word cut me to the heart. Tears filled my eyes. I struggled hard to keep them from falling, while I just murmured: "I beg your pardon!" Again he demanded my reading, saying they were not "too old to learn," and in sheer desperation, I exclaimed: "I was only speaking to myself, but I thought Lady Macbeth was amazed at the quantity of blood that flowed from the body of such an old man—for when you get old, you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only just thought, that as the 'sleeping men were laced,' and the knives 'smeared,' and her hands 'bathed' with it, she might have perhaps whispered: 'Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' I didn't mean an impertinence!" and down fell the tears, for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.

He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said: "Humph!" and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and cried and cried, and vowed that never, never again would I talk to myself—in the theatre at all events. I mention these incidents to show how quickly I came under the influence of these Shakespeare-studying men and women, some of whom had received their very adequate education from him alone.

It was odd to hear how they used his words and expressions in their daily conversation. 'Twas not so much quoting him intentionally, as it was an unconscious incorporation into their own language of Shakespeare's lines.

Tramps were to them almost always "vagrom men." When one did some very foolish thing, he almost surely begged to be "written down an ass." The appearance of a pretty actress in her new spring or fall gown was as surely hailed with: "The riches of the ship have come on shore!"

I saw a pet dog break for the third time from restraint to follow his master, who put his hand on the animal's head and rather worriedly remarked: "'The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble—which still'" (with a big sigh) "'we thank as love!' But you'll have to go back, old fellow, all the same." If someone obliged you, and you expressed the fear that you had given him trouble, he would be absolutely certain to reply, pleasantly and quite honestly: "The labor we delight in physics pain!" And so on and on unendingly. And I almost believe that had an old actor seen these three great speeches: The "seven ages" of man, "To be or not to be!" and "Othello's occupation's gone," grouped together, he would have fallen upon his knees and become an idolator there and then.

Yes, I found them odd people, but I liked them. The world was brightening for me, and I felt I had a right to my share of the air and light, and as much of God's earth as my feet could stand upon.

I had had a little part entrusted to me, too, the very first week of the season. A young backwoods-boy, Tom Bruce, by name, and I had borrowed some clothes and had slammed about with my gun, and spoken my few words out loud and clear, and had met with approving looks, if not words, but not yet was the actress aroused in me, I was still a mere school-girl reciting her lessons. My proudest moment had been when I was allowed to go on for the longest witch in the cauldron scene in "Macbeth." Perhaps I might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say: "That child will never speak those lines in the world!" and the leading man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years old, and had to be called a "child!"

I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines, at all hours, under all kinds of circumstances, so that nothing should be able to frighten me at night. And then, with my paste-board crown and white sheet and petticoat, I boiled-up in the cauldron and gave my lines well enough for the manager (who was Hecate just then) to say low, "Good! Good!" and the leading man next night asked me to take care of his watch and chain during his combat scene, and my pride of bearing was most unseemly, and the other ballet-girls loved me not at all, for you see they, too, knew he was six feet tall and handsome.

This theatre in which I found myself was, in professional parlance, a family theatre, a thing abhorred by many, especially by actresses. Not much wonder either, for even as the green bay tree flourisheth in the psalm, so does nepotism flourish in the family theatre; and when it's a case of the managerial Monsieur, Madame, et Bébés all acting, many are the tears, sobs, and hot words that follow upon the absorption by these three of all the good parts, while all the poor ones are placed with strictest justice where they belong. At that time men and women were engaged each for a special "line of business," and to ask anyone to act outside of his "line" was an offence not lightly passed over.

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with theatrical terms of procedure, I will state that a company was generally made up of a leading man (heroes, of course), first old man, second old man, heavy man, first comedian, second comedian, juvenile man, walking gentleman, and utility man.

That term, "heavy man," of course had no reference to the actor's physical condition, but it generally implied a deep voice, heavy eyebrows, and a perfect willingness to stab in the back or smilingly to poison the wine of the noblest hero or the fairest heroine in the business; so the professional player of villains was a heavy man.

The juvenile man may have left juvenility far, far behind him in reality, but if his back was flat, his eyes large and hair good; he would support old mothers, be falsely accused of thefts, and win wealthy sweethearts in last acts, with great éclat—as juvenile men were expected to do.

Walking gentlemen didn't walk all the time; truth to tell, they stood about and pretended a deep interest in other people's affairs, most of the time. They were those absent Pauls or Georges that are talked about continually by sweethearts or friends or irate fathers, and finally appear just at the end of everything, simply to prove they really do exist, and to hold a lady's hand, while the curtain falls on the characters, all nicely lined up and bowing like toy mandarins.

The utility man was generally not a man, but a large, gloomy boy, whose mustache would not grow, and whose voice would crack over the few lines he was invited to address to the public. He sometimes led mobs, but more often made brief statements as to the whereabouts of certain carriages—and therein laid his claim to utility.

Then came the leading lady, the first old woman (who was sometimes the heavy woman), the first singing soubrette, the walking ladies, the second soubrette (and boys' parts), the utility woman, and the ladies of the ballet. These were the principal "lines of business," and in an artistic sense they bound actors both hand and foot; so utterly inflexible were they that the laws of the Medes and Persians seemed blithe and friendly things in comparison.

"Oh, I can't play that; it's not in my line!" "Oh, yes, I sing, but the singing don't belong to my line!" "I know, he looks the part and I don't, but it belongs to my line!" and so, nearly every week, some performance used to be marred by the slavish clinging to these defined "lines of business."

Mr. Augustin Daly was the first manager who dared to ignore the absolute "line." "You must trust my judgment to cast you for the characters you are best suited to perform, and you must trust my honor not to lower or degrade you, by casting you below your rightful position, for I will not be hampered and bound by any fixed 'lines of business.'" So said he to all would-be members of his company. The pill was a trifle bitter in the swallowing, as most pills are, but it was so wholesome in its effect that ere long other managers were following Mr. Daly's example.

But to return to our mutton. If the family theatre was disliked by those who had already won recognized positions, it was at least an ideal place in which a young girl could begin her professional life. The manager, Mr. John A. Ellsler, was an excellent character-actor as well as a first old man. His wife, Mrs. Effie Ellsler, was his leading woman—his daughter Effie, though not out of school at that time, acted whenever there was a very good part that suited her. The first singing soubrette was the wife of the prompter and the stage-manager. The first old woman was the mother of the walking lady, and so it came about that there was not even the pink flush of a flirtation over the first season, and, though another season was shaken and thrilled through and through by the elopement and marriage of James Lewis with Miss Frankie Hurlburt, a young lady from private life in Cleveland, yet in all the years I served in that old theatre, no real scandal ever smirched it.

True, one poor little ballet-girl fell from our ranks and was drawn into that piteous army of women, who, with silk petticoats and painted cheeks, seek joy in the bottom of the wine cup. Poor little soul! how we used to lock the dressing-room door and lower our voices when we spoke of having seen her.

I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the dear woman who watched over me that first season—Mrs. Bradshaw, one of the most versatile, most earnest, most devoted actresses I ever saw, and a good woman besides.

She had known sorrow, trouble, and loss. She was widowed, she had two children to support unaided, but she made moan to no one. She worked early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed. Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.

It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are absolutely without the sense of order. Their irregular hours, their unsettled mode of life, camping out a few days in this hotel and then in that in a measure explain it, but Mrs. Bradshaw set an example of neat orderliness that was well worth following.

"I can't see," she used to say, "why an actress should be a slattern."

Then if anyone murmured: "Early rehearsals, great haste, you know!" she would answer: "You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal—then get up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an actress does is commented upon, and as she is more or less an object of suspicion, her conduct should be even more rigidly correct than that of other women." She had been a beauty in her youth, as her regular features still proclaimed, and though her figure had become almost Falstaffian, her graceful arm movements and the dignity of her carriage saved her from being in the slightest degree grotesque. The secret of her smiling contentment was her honest love for her work.

We had one taste in common—this experienced woman and my now fourteen-year-old self—books! books! and yet books, we read. I borrowed from my friends and she also read—she borrowed from her friends and I, too, read, and she came to speak of them, and then of her own ideas, and so I found that this woman, already on the way to age, who was so poor and hard-working, and had nothing to look forward to but work, was yet cheerfully contented, because she loved the work—yes, and honored it, and held her head high, because she was an actress with a clean reputation!

"Study your lines—speak them with exactitude, just as they are written!" she used to say to me, with a sort of passion in her voice.

"Don't just gather the idea of a speech, and then use your own words, that's an infamous habit. The author knew what he wanted you to say—for God's sake honor the poor dead writer's wishes and speak his lines exactly as he wrote them! If he says: 'My lord the carriage waits!' don't you go on and say: 'My lord the carriage is waiting!'"

I almost believe she would have fallen in a dead faint had she been prompted, and to have been late to a rehearsal would have been a shame greater than she could have borne. To this woman's example, I owe the strict business-like habits of attention to study and rehearsals that have won so much praise for me from my managers.

Had Mr. Ellsler's intention of taking his company to another city for a great part of the season been known in advance, my mother would never have given consent to my membership; but the season was three months old before we knew that we were to be transferred to Columbus, the State capital, where we were to remain, while the Legislature sat in large arm-chairs, passing bad bills, and killing good ones, for some three months or more—at least that was the ordinary citizen's opinion of the conduct of the State's wise men. It seemed to me that when a man paid his taxes he felt he had purchased the right to grumble at his representatives to his heart's content.

But that move to Columbus was a startling event in my life. It meant leaving my mother and standing quite alone. She was filled with anxiety, principally for my physical welfare, but I felt, every now and then, my grief and fright pierced through and through with a delicious thrill of importance. I was going to be just like a grown-up, and would decide for myself what I should wear. I might even, if I chose to become so reckless, wear my Sunday hat to a rehearsal; and when my cheap little trunk came, with C. M. on the end, showing it was my very own, I stooped down and hugged it. But later, when my mother with a sad face separated my garments from her own, taking them from her trunk, where they had always rested before, I burst into sobs and tears of utter forlornness.

The Columbus trip had a special effect upon the affairs of the ballet. We had received $3 a week salary, but every one of us had had some home assistance. Now we were going to a strange city, and no one on earth could manage to live on such a salary as that, so our stipend was raised to $5 a week, and the three of us (we were but three that season) set to work trying to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board-bill, her basket-bill, her wash-bill, and all the small expenses of the theatre—powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc., to say nothing at all of shoes and clothing—all out of $5 a week.

Of course there was but one way to do it, and that was by doubling-up and sharing a room with some one, and that first season I was very lucky. Mrs. Bradshaw found a house where the top floor had been finished off as one great long room, running the entire length of the building from gable to gable, and she offered me a share in it.

Oh, I was glad! Blanche and I had one-half the room, and Mrs. Bradshaw and the irrepressible little torment and joy of her life, small Jack, had the other half. No wonder I grew to reverence her, whose character could bear such intimate association as that. I don't know what her religious beliefs were. She read her Bible Sundays, but she never went to church, neither did she believe in a material hell; but it was not long before I discovered that when I said my prayers over in my corner, she paused in whatever she was doing, and remained with downcast eyes—a fact that made me scramble a bit, I'm afraid.

There was but one thing in our close companionship that caused her pain, and that was the inevitable belief of strangers, that I was her daughter and Blanche her protegée—they being misled by the difference in our manner toward her. In the severity of my upbringing I had been taught that it was nothing short of criminal to be lacking in respect for those who were older than myself; therefore I was not only strictly obedient to her expressed wishes, but I rose when she entered a room, opened and closed doors, placed chairs at table, gave her precedence on all occasions, and served her in such small ways as were possible; while Blanche ignored her to such a degree that one might have mistaken her for a stranger to our little party.

Poor mother! the tears stood thick in her brave eyes when the landlady, on our third day in her house, remarked to her, patting me on the shoulder as she spoke: "You have a most devoted little daughter, here!"

And there was a distinct pause, before she answered, gently: "You mistake—I have a devoted little friend here, in Clara, but Blanche is my daughter!" She was a singular being, that daughter. It is seldom indeed that a girl, who is not bad, can yet be such a thorn in the side of a mother. She was a most disconcerting, baffling creature—a tricksy, elfish spirit, that delighted in malicious fun. Pleasure-loving, indolent, and indifferent alike to praise or blame, she (incredible as it seems) would willingly give up a good part to save herself the trouble of playing it. I recall a trick she once performed in my favor. I thought the Player-Queen in "Hamlet" was a beautiful part, and I hungered to play it; but it belonged to Blanche, and, of course, she was cast for it; but said she: "You could have it, for all I'd care!" Then, suddenly, she added: "Say, you may play it with the next Hamlet that comes along!"

I pointed out the impossibility of such an assertion coming true, but she grinned widely at me and chewed her gum as one who knew many things beyond my ken, and counselled me to "watch out and see what happened." I watched out, and this happened:

When the mimic-play was going on before the King and Court, my impish friend Blanche, as the Player-Queen, should have said: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a widow, ever I be wife!"

Instead of which, loudly and distinctly, she proclaimed: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a wife, ever I be widowed!"

Hamlet rolled over on his face, Queen Gertrude (Mrs. Bradshaw) groaned aloud, Polonius (Mr. Ellsler) threatened discharge, under cover of the laughter of the audience, while guilty Blanche grinned in impish enjoyment of her work, and next "Hamlet" I was cast for the Player-Queen, to punish Blanche. To punish her, indeed—she was as merry as a sand-boy, standing about chewing gum and telling stories all the evening.

The "tatting" craze was sweeping over the country then, everybody wore tatting and almost everybody made it. I worked day and night at it, tatting at rehearsal and between scenes, and lady-stars often bought my work, to my great pleasure as well as profit. Blanche wanted a new shuttle, and her mother, who was under extra expense just then, told her she could have it the next week. It was shortly before Christmas, and next morning at rehearsal, with all the company present, Blanche walked up to Mr. Ellsler and asked him if he had any money.

He looked bewildered, and answered somewhat doubtfully that he thought he had a little. "Well," said she, "I want you to give me a quarter, so I can get you a Christmas present."

There was a burst of laughter as Mr. Ellsler handed her the quarter, and after rehearsal this is what she did with it:

On Superior Street a clothing store was being sold out—a forced sale. There she bought a black shoe-string tie for five cents, as a gift for Mr. Ellsler, and elsewhere got for herself a tatting-shuttle and five pieces of chewing-gum, and chuckled over her caper, quite undisturbed by her mother's tears.

One thing only moved her, one thing only she loved, music! She had a charming voice, clear, pure, and cold as crystal, and she sang willingly, nay, even eagerly, whenever she had the opportunity. In after years she became a well-known singer in light opera.

During that first season I learned to stand alone, to take care of myself and my small belongings without admonition from anyone. One of my notions was that, since an immortal soul had to dwell in my body, it became my bounden duty to bestow upon it regular and painstaking care in honor of its tenant. The idea may seem extravagant, yet it served me well, since it did for me what a mother's watchful supervision does for other little girls when habits are being formed.

I had learned, too, most of the technical terms used in the profession. I knew all about footlights, wings, flies, borders, drops, braces, grooves, traps, etc. I understood the queer abbreviations. Knew that O.P. side was opposite the prompt side, where the prompter stood with his book of the play to give the word to any actor whose memory failed him and to ring the two bells for the close of the act—one of warning to the curtain-man up aloft to get ready, the other for him to lower the curtain. Knew that R.U.E. and L.U.E. were right or left upper entrance; C., centre of the stage; R.C., right of centre; CD., centre-door. That to go D.S. or U.S. was an intimation that you would do well to go down stage or up stage, while an X. to C. was a terse request for you to cross to the centre of the stage, and that a whole lot of other letters meant a whole lot of other directions that would only bore a reader.

I understood how many illusions were produced, and one of the proofs that I was meant to be an actress was to be found in my enjoyment of the mechanism of stage effects. I was always on hand when a storm had to be worked, and would grind away with a will at the crank that, turning a wheel against a tight band of silk, made the sound of a tremendously shrieking wind, which filled me with pride and personal satisfaction. And no one sitting in front of the house looking at a white-robed woman ascending to heaven, apparently floating upward through the blue clouds, enjoyed the spectacle more than I enjoyed looking at the ascent from the rear, where I could see the tiny iron support for her feet, the rod at her back with the belt holding her securely about the waist (just as though she were standing on a large hoe, with the handle at her back), and the men hoisting her through the air, with a painted, sometimes moving, sky behind her.

This reminds me that Mrs. Bradshaw had several times to go to heaven (dramatically speaking), and as her figure and weight made the hoe support useless in her case, she always went to heaven on the entire paint-frame or gallery, as it is called—a long platform the whole width of the stage that is raised and lowered at will by windlass, and on which the artists stand while painting scenery. This enormous affair would be cleaned and hung about with nice blue clouds, and then Mrs. Bradshaw, draped in long, white robes, with hands meekly crossed upon her ample breast and eyes piously uplifted, would rise heavenward, slowly, as so heavy an angel should. But, alas! there was one drawback to this otherwise perfect ascension. Never, so long as the theatre stood, could that windlass be made to work silently. The paint-gallery always moved up or down to a succession of screaks unoilable, untamable, blood-curdling, that were intensified by Mrs. Bradshaw's weight, so that she ascended to the blue tarlatan empyrean accompanied by such chugs and long-drawn yowlings as suggested a trip to the infernal regions. Mrs. Bradshaw's face remained calm and unmoved, but now and then an agonized moan escaped her, lest even the orchestra's effort to cover up the paint-frame's protesting cries should prove useless. Poor woman, when she had been lowered again to terra firma and stepped off, the whole paint-frame would give a kind of joyous upward spring. She noticed it, and one evening looked back, and said: "Oh, you're not a bit more glad than I am, you screaking wretch!"

I had learned to make up my face properly, to dress my hair in various ways, and was beginning to know something about correct costuming; but as the season was drawing to its close my heart quaked and I was sick with fear, for I was facing, for the first time, that terror, that affliction of the actor's life, the summer vacation.

People little dream what a period of misery that is to many stage folk. Seeing them well dressed, laughing and talking lightly with the acquaintances they meet on the street, one little suspects that the gnawing pain of hunger may be busy with their stomachs—that a woman's fainting "because of the extreme heat, you know," was really caused by want of food. That the fresh handkerchiefs are of their own washing. That the garments are guarded with almost inconceivable care, and are only worn on the street, some older articles answering in their lodgings—and that it is not vanity, but business, for a manager is not attracted by a seedy or a shabby-looking applicant for an engagement.

Oh, the weary, weary miles the poor souls walk! with not a penny in their pockets. They are compelled to say, "Roll on, sweet chariot!" to even the street-car as it appears before their longing eyes.

Some people, mostly men, under these circumstances will stand and look at the viands spread out temptingly in the restaurant windows; others, myself among the number, will avoid such places as one would avoid a pestilence.

We were back in Cleveland for the last of the season, and I used to count, over and over again, my tiny savings and set them in little piles. The wash, the board, and, dear heaven! there were six long, long weeks of vacation, and I had only one little pile of board money to set against the whole six. I had six little piles of wash money, and one other little pile, the raison d'être of which I may explain by and by, if I am not too much ashamed of the early folly.

Now I was staying at that acme of inconvenience and discomfort, a cheap boarding-house, where, by the way, social lines were drawn with sharp distinction, the upper class coldly recognizing the middle class, but ignoring the very existence of the lower class, refugees from ignoble fortune.

Mrs. Bradshaw, by right of dignity and regular payments for the best room in the house, was the star-boarder, and it was undoubtedly her friendship which raised me socially from that third and lowest class to which my small payments would have relegated me.

Standing in my tiny, closet-like room, by lifting myself to my toes, I could touch the ceiling. There was not space for a bureau, but the yellow wash-stand stood quite firmly, with the assistance of a brick, which made up for the absence of part of its off hind leg. There was a kitchen-chair that may have been of pine, but my aching back proclaimed it lignum-vitæ. A mere sliver of a bed stretched itself sullenly in the corner, where its slats, showing their outlines through the meagre bed-clothing, suggested the ribs of an attenuated cab-horse. From that bed early rising became a pleasure instead of a mere duty. Above the wash-stand, in a narrow, once veneered but now merely glue-covered frame, hung a small looking-glass, that, size considered, could, I believe, do more damage to the human countenance than could any other mirror in the world. It had a sort of dimple in its middle, which had the effect of scattering one's features into the four corners of the glass, loosely—a nose and eyebrow here, a mouth yonder, and one's "altogether" nowhere.

It was very disconcerting. Blanche said it made her quite sea-sick, or words to that effect. This dreadful little apartment lay snug against the roof. In the winter the snow sifted prettily but uncomfortably here and there. In the summer the heat was appalling. Those old-timers who knew the house well, called No. 15 the "torture-chamber," and many a time, during the fiercest heat, Mrs. Bradshaw would literally drive me from the small fiery furnace to her own room, where at least there was air to breathe, for No. 15 had but half a window. And yet, miserable as this place was, it was a refuge and a shelter. The house was well known, it was ugly, as cheap things are apt to be, but it was respectable and safe, and I trembled at the thought of losing my right to enter there.

In the past my mother had been employed by the landlady as seamstress and as housekeeper, besides which she had once nursed the lonely old woman through a severe sickness, and as I had been permitted to live with my mother, Mrs. Miller of course knew me well; so one day when she found me engaged in the unsatisfactory occupation of recounting my money she asked me, very gruffly, what I was going to do through the summer. I gazed at her with wide, frightened eyes, and was simply dumb. More sharply, she asked: "Do you hear?—what are you going to do when the theatre closes?"

I swallowed hard, and then faintly answered: "I've got one week's board saved, Mrs. Miller, but after that I—I—," had my soul depended upon the speaking of another word I could not have uttered it.

She glared her most savage glare at me. She impatiently pushed her false front awry, pulled at her spectacles, and finally took up one of my six little piles of coin and asked: "What's this for?"

"Washing," I gasped.

"You don't send your handkerchiefs to the wash, do you?" she demanded, suspiciously.

I shook my head and pointed to a handkerchief drying on a string at my half-window.

"That's right," she remarked, in a slightly mollified tone. Then she reached over, took up the pile that was meant for the next week's board, and putting it in her pocket, she remarked: "I'll just take this now, so you won't run no risk of losing it, and for the next five weeks after, why, well your mother was honest before you, and I reckon you're going to take after her. You promise to be a hard worker, too, so, well nobody else has ever been able to stay in this room over a week—so I guess you can go on stopping right here, till the theatre opens again, and you can pay me by fits and starts as it comes handy for you. Why, what's the matter with you? Well, I vum! you must be clean tuckered out to cry like that! Land sakes, child! tie a wet rag on your head and lay right down, till you can get picked up a bit!" and out she bounced.

Dear old raging savage! how she used to frighten us all! how she barked and barked, but she never, never bit! How I wanted to kiss her withered old cheek that day when she offered me shelter on trust! But she was eighty-five years old and my honored guest here at "The Pines" before I told her all the terror and the gratitude she brought to me that day.

My clear skin, bright eyes, and round face gave me an appearance of perfect health, which was belied by the pain I almost unceasingly endured. The very inadequate provision my poor mother had been able to make for the necessaries of her child's welfare, the cruel restrictions placed upon my exercise, even upon movement in that wooden chair, where I sat with numb limbs five hours at a stretch, had greatly aggravated a slight injury to my spine received in babyhood. And now I was facing a life of hard work, handicapped by that most tenacious, most cruel of torments, a spinal trouble.

At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back, spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words "fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented, crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of uncertain health may have caused the capricious appetite that tormented me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coarse food. Heavy meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by rice-pudding.

But the trouble from the fastidious appetite came when it suddenly demanded something for its gratification—imperiously, even furiously demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appetite of mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else. Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be piled on my table (I lived far from shell-oysters then), and when I awoke I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been saved for.

At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things, but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. Fifteen or twenty-five cents was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.

But, good gracious! what a sum of money—ten cents for a mere pleasure! though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long, blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pass in the "torture-chamber," but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I could live on memory, and the next upon anticipation, and so get through the long vacation in comparative comfort.

There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the lignum-vitæ chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.

The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel, buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked; but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction. The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights, to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill—and then my heart stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear God! a man's great red hand was grasping it—was clutching it, here and there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs—too late. The dress lay in the doorway—the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed eyes. The smell of a musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk; then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping craving for ice-cream.

It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my first theatrical vacation.