"I see you're made out of the right kind of stuff," said George, "and I'll give you a first-class chance. You're ambitious and you're lean—lean enough to play Falstaff—and lean and ambitious people always make their mark. Have you ever heard of the lean and hungry Cassius?—I don't mean a depositor at the door of a busted bank, but the Cassius of 'Julius Cæsar.' I'll bet you feel just like him now; you look like him."
The Cahokian candidate for Thespian honors blushed.
"Well," the practical joker went on, "you can begin work this morning. The minstrels will be here in a few minutes for rehearsal, and they want a new box of gags. Go over to Harry Noxon, at the Comique, and ask him to give you a box of the best gags he's got. Tell him they're for me."
With a face wreathed in smiles the Cahokian Cassius stalked off towards the Comique while George went out and gathered in a few friends to enjoy the joke. The Cahokian went to the Comique, and Harry Noxon, understanding what was meant, gave the poor fellow a box half filled with bricks, and telling him that was all he had, directed him to go up to Pope's and ask for Ed. Zimmerman, who would fill the box for him. Shouldering the heavy load, the Cahokian moved bravely out towards Pope's, six and one-half blocks away. He was pretty tired when he got there. Ed. Zimmerman, in obedience to his request, sent the box around to the stage-door, where the carpenter removed the lid and added bricks enough to fill the receptacle. Nailing the lid on again the stage-struck youth was once more presented with it. It took a great deal of exertion for him to get the box to his shoulder, and when he had it there he staggered along under the load like a drunken man, to the Opera House seven blocks away. When he reached the Opera House, McManus said the Minstrels had changed their mind about using any new gags, and requested the Cahokian to carry them over to the Olympic. The Cahokian looked at McManus, then took a woeful and weary look at the box, and, wiping the perspiration from his high forehead and thin face, he swung his slouch hat over his brow and remarked that he was tired.
"I say, Mister," he said, "if that's what a fellow's got to do to be a actor I'd sooner plow corn er run a thrashin'-masheen twenty-three hours out'n the twenty-four. I thought there was more fun in the business than carryin' around two or three hundred pounds of iron or somethin' like it, all day in the sun. I guess I'll throw up my engagement. Good-bye." And he strode out into the street, while George and his friends had a laugh that was as hearty as the lungs that led in the merriment were loud and strong.
KITTY BLANCHARD.
There are a few young men and young ladies in this world who do not take the same view of the stage that the Cahokian took: they imagine there is a great deal of fun in being an actor or an actress, and that it does not require any special effort to arrive at the point where a person becomes a full-fledged professional. In this they are just as much mistaken as was the Cahokian, and sometimes, after they have gone into training for the profession, they tire of the hard work as readily almost as the stage-struck young farmer tired of carrying the box of "gags." There is a general wild desire among the young people of this country to make players of themselves. They dream that the stage is something like a seventh heaven where there is nothing but music and singing and golden glory forever—admirers, wealth, and an uninterrupted good time generally. They do not know anything about the long and toilsome hours of work and the comparatively poor pay that form the portion of all who are not at the top of the dramatic ladder. They never pause to think if they are girls of the temptations into which they will be thrown, and of the slanders that will be uttered against their fair names upon the slightest provocation. All they see or know of theatrical life is its bright gilded side, the tinsel that looks valuable, the jewels that are paste, the silks and satins that are not what they seem, and the beautiful faces and bright smiles beneath which are wrinkles and toil-laden looks, when the actress is in her home plying her needle or studying the long lengths that belong to her part. It is because people are so ignorant of the realities of dramatic life that so many become stage-struck and go around striking tragic attitudes and rating imaginary scenery in a rabid rant through Othello's address to the Senate, or Hamlet's scene with his mother in the latter's chamber. There are forty thousand young ladies in this land who want to be Mary Andersons, and as many more who think they can kick as cutely as Lotta, while one hundred thousand semi-bald young men imagine they could out-Hamlet Booth if they had a chance, or lift the mantle of Forrest from John McCullough if the latter dared enter the ring with them. A Louisville newspaper reporter gave a very humorous description of an epidemic of this kind that prevailed in Mary Anderson's home city some time ago. "One half the girls of the city," said the writer, "are stage-struck!—stark, staring stage-struck. Hundreds of residences have been converted into amateur play-houses, where would-be female stars tear their hair, rave and split the air with their arms, and stalk majestically across imaginary stages to the imaginary music of imaginary orchestras, and amid burst of imaginary applause and showers of imaginary boquets. In the dry goods stores young ladies rush up to the counters with inspiration dropping from their eyes in great hunks and in hollow tones command the affrightened clerk to—
"Haste thee, cringing vassal; pr-r-r-r-ro-duce and br-r-r-r-r-ing into our pr-r-r-r-r-esence thy sixty-five-cent hose!"
In the ice cream saloons the maidens shove the cooling cream into their lovely mouths and sweetly murmur to their escorts:—