Instructor in Fencing.
Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.
These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts, and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and another as the Baron in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable hit as Cadeaux, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."
It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money, and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same theater—the Broadway—in "The Oolah."