Wilder is big-hearted. “The biggest fee I ever received,” he stated in reply to my inquiry, “was the satisfaction I saw depicted on a poor man’s face. It was on a railway train. A life-prisoner was being taken, after a long man-hunt in Europe and America, out to Kansas City. I never saw so dejected a face. I devoted four or five hours to brightening him up, and when I left he was smiling all over. I had succeeded in making him forget his misery for at least four hours!”
A wealthy gentleman of New York pays Mr. Wilder a stated sum every year to “cheer up” the inmates of hospitals and similar institutions.
XXXVIII
Energy and Earnestness Win an Actor Fame.
“WHO will play the part?” asked A. M. Palmer, anxiously, looking over the members of his “Parisian Romance” company one night when the actor who had been playing ‘Baron Cheval’ failed to appear.
“I will,” spoke up an obscure young player, a serious, earnest man who had been “utility” for the company only a short time.
It was Richard Mansfield, and the part was given him. It had not been a conspicuous part up to that hour, but that night Mr. Mansfield made it a leading one. He saw in it opportunities for a deeper dramatic portrayal, for an expression of intense earnestness, and for that finished acting which ennobles any part in a play, however humble. Before the performance was over, he had opened the eyes of the company and the public to the fact that a new actor of great talent had come to the front at a bound.
In his beautiful home in New York, the other day, I found him surrounded by the evidences of wealth and artistic taste.