It Led Him from His Native London,
Through Canada, and Finally to the
Old Lyceum Stock Company.
Henry Miller was born in London, but brought up in Canada. He was only a schoolboy when he chanced to read a magazine article about Henry Irving. This fired him with the ambition to act, but he set about realizing it in a most matter-of-fact and sensible way.
Instead of running off to join some theatrical troupe as a super, he began the study of elocution under the late W.C. Couldock, best remembered perhaps as the worthy miller, father of Hazel Kirke. This was at Miller's home, in Toronto, and here he had four years of grounding in the text of Shakespeare.
He was barely nineteen when the chance came, at a Toronto theater, for him to show what his studying had taught him. He was assigned to the part of the bleeding Sergeant in "Macbeth," and the very fact that the company was merely a scratch affair, not far removed from the barnstorming category, really worked to young Miller's advantage.
He was the first leading man with the old Lyceum stock, in "The Wife," and the second at the Empire. In 1899, he expressed his greatest ambition as being the management of a New York theater. This he has realized the past winter at the Princess, where he organized and produced "Zira" for Miss Anglin.
STORM FOR MISS RUSSELL.
As a Child of Ten She Excited Rose
Eytinge's Anger Because She
Lacked Experience.
Annie Russell, like Miss Bates, comes of theatrical stock, so the door to the stage was on the latch for her.
Miss Russell's first appearance took place in Montreal when she was ten years old, and was preceded by a heart-breaking episode. Rose Eytinge was playing "Miss Multon" against Clara Morris. Two children are needed in the piece, and when Miss Eytinge ascertained that one of them—Jeanne, assigned to Annie Russell—had never been on before, she was furious.
"Do you want to queer the show when so much depends on it?" she demanded of E.A. McDowell, her manager.