So if you really are one of these, I can only say, "Act, act!" and Heaven have you in its holy keeping.
But, dear gifted woman, pause before you put your hand to the plough that will turn your future into such strange furrows; remember, the life of the theatre is a hard life, a homeless life; that it is a wandering up and down the earth; a life filled full with partings, with sweet, lost friendships; that its triumphs are brilliant but brief.
If you do truly love acting, simply and solely for the sake of acting, then all will be well with you, and you will be content; but verily you will be a marvel.
For the poor girl or woman who, because she has to earn her own living, longs to become an actress, my heart aches.
You will say good-by to mother's petting; you will live in your trunk. The time will come when that poor hotel trunk (so called to distinguish it from the trunk that goes to the theatre, when you are travelling or en route), with its dents and scars, will be the only friendly object to greet you in your desolate boarding-house, with its one wizened, unwilling gas-burner, and its outlook upon back yards and cats, or roofs and sparrows, its sullen, hard-featured bed, its despairing carpet; for you see, you will not have the money that might take you to the front of the house and four burners. Rain or shine, you will have to make your lonely, often frightened way to and from the theatre.
At rehearsals you will have to stand about, wearily waiting hours while others rehearse over and over again their more important scenes; yet you may not leave for a walk or a chat, for you do not know at what moment your scene may be called. You will not be made much of. You will receive a "Good morning" or "Good evening" from the company, probably nothing more. If you are travelling, you will literally live in your hat and cloak. You will breakfast in them many and many a time, you will dine in them regularly, that you may rise at once and go to the theatre or car. You will see no one, go nowhere.
If you are in earnest, you will simply endure the first year,—endure and study,—and all for what? That, after dressing in the corner farthest from the looking-glass, in a dismal room you would scarcely use for your housemaid's brooms and dusters at home, you may stand for a few moments in the background of some scene, and watch
the leading lady making the hit in the foreground. Will these few, well-dressed, well-lighted, music-thrilled moments repay you for the loss of home love, home comfort, home stardom?
To that bright, energetic girl, just home from school, overeducated, perhaps, with nothing to do, restless,—forgive me,—vain, who wants to go upon the stage, let me say: "Pause a moment, my dear, in your comfortable home, and think of the unemployed actresses who are suffering from actual want. Is there one among you, who, if you had the chance, would care to strike the bread from the hand of one of these? Ask God that the scales of unconscious selfishness may fall from your eyes. Look about you and see if there is not some duty, however small, the more irksome the better, that you may take from your mother's daily load, some service you can render for father, brother, sister, aunt; some daily household task, so small you may feel contemptuous of
it, yet some one must do it, and it may be a special thorn in that some one's side. So surely as you force yourself to do the small things nearest your hand, so surely will you be called upon for greater service."