Life on the Stage

Previous Books by Clara Morris
The Silent Singer
Little Jim Crow

CLARA MORRIS
Life on the Stage
My Personal Experiences and Recollections

New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.
MCMII
Copyright, 1901, by S. S. MCCLURE CO.
1901, by CLARA MORRIS HARRIOTT
Fifth Impression

In memory of a labor shared, I affectionately dedicate this book to my husband.

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER FIRST]
I am Born

[CHAPTER SECOND]
Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger—I Become Acquainted with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions

[CHAPTER THIRD]
I Enter a New World—I Know a New Hunger and we Return to Cleveland

[CHAPTER FOURTH]
I am Led into the Theatre—I Attend Rehearsals—I am Made Acquainted with the Vagaries of Tights

[CHAPTER FIFTH]
I Receive my First Salary—I am Engaged for the Coming Season

[CHAPTER SIXTH]
The Regular Season Opens—I have a Small Part to Play—I am among Lovers of Shakespeare—I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the Charm

[CHAPTER SEVENTH]
I find I am in a "Family Theatre"—I Fare Forth away from my Mother, and in Columbus I Shelter under the wing of Mrs. Bradshaw

[CHAPTER EIGHTH]
I Display my New Knowledge—I Return to Cleveland to Face my First Theatrical Vacation, and I Know the very Tragedy of Littleness

[CHAPTER NINTH]
The Season Reopens—I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility Man—Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work

[CHAPTER TENTH]
With Mr. Dan. Setchell I Win Applause—A Strange Experience comes to Me—I Know Both Fear and Ambition—The Actress is Born at Last

[CHAPTER ELEVENTH]
My Promiscuous Reading wins me a Glass of Soda—The Stage takes up my Education and Leads me through Many Pleasant Places

[CHAPTER TWELFTH]
The Peter Richings' Engagement brings me my First Taste of Slander—Anent the Splendor of my Wardrobe, also my First Newspaper Notice

[CHAPTER THIRTEENTH]
Mr. Roberts Refers to Me as "That Young Woman," to My Great Joy—I Issue the "Clara Code"—I Receive my First Offer of Marriage

[CHAPTER FOURTEENTH]
Mr. Wilkes Booth comes to us, the whole Sex Loves him—Mr. Ellsler Compares him to his Great Father—Our Grief and Horror over the Awful Tragedy at Washington

[CHAPTER FIFTEENTH]
Mr. R. E. J. Miles—His two Horses and our Woful Experience with the Substitute "Wild Horse of Tartary"

[CHAPTER SIXTEENTH]
I perform a Remarkable Feat, I Study King Charles in One Afternoon and Play Without a Rehearsal—Mrs. D. P. Bowers makes Odd Revelation

[CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH]
Through Devotion to my Friend, I Jeopardize my Reputation—I Own a Baby on Shares—Miss Western's Pathetic Speech

[CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH]
Mr. Charles W. Couldock—His Daughter Eliza and his Many Peculiarities

[CHAPTER NINETEENTH]
I Come to a Turning-Point in my Dramatic Life—I play my First Crying Part with Miss Sallie St. Clair

[CHAPTER TWENTIETH]
I have to pass through Bitter Humiliation to win High Encomiums from Herr Bandmann; while Edwin Booth's Kindness Fills the Theatre with Pink Clouds, and I Float Thereon

[CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST]
I Digress, but I Return to the Columbus Engagement of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean—Their Peculiarities and their Work

[CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND]
I hear Mrs. Kean's Story of Wolsey's Robe—I laugh at an Extravagantly Kind Prophecy

[CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD]
Mr. E. L. Davenport, his Interference, his Lecture on Stage Business, his Error of Memory or too Powerful Imagination—Why I remain a Dramatic Old Slipper—Contemptuous Words arouse in me a Dogged Determination to become a Leading Woman before leaving Cleveland

[CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH]
I recall the Popularity and too early Death of Edwin Adams

[CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH]
I See an Actress Dethroned—I make myself a Promise, for the World does Move

[CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH]
Mr. Lawrence Barrett the Brilliant and his Brother Joseph the Unfortunate

[CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH]
I Play "Marie" to Oblige—Mr. Barrett's Remarkable Call—Did I Receive a Message from the Dying or the Dead?

[CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH]
I accept an Engagement with Mr. Macaulay for Cincinnati as Leading Lady—My Adieus to Cleveland—Mr. Ellsler Presents Me with a Watch

[CHAPTER TWENTY-NINTH]
My first Humiliating Experience in Cincinnati is Followed by a Successful Appearance—I Make the Acquaintance of the Enthusiastic Navoni

[CHAPTER THIRTIETH]
New York City is Suggested to Me by Mr. Worthington and Mr. Johnson—Mr. Ellsler's Mild Assistance—I Journey to New York, and Return to Cincinnati with Signed Contract from Mr. Daly

[CHAPTER THIRTY-FIRST]
John Cockerill and our Eccentric Engagement—I Play a Summer Season at Halifax—Then to New York, and to House-Keeping at Last

[CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND]
I Recall Mr. John E. Owens, and How He "Settled my Hash"

[CHAPTER THIRTY-THIRD]
From the "Wild West" I Enter the Eastern "Parlor of Home Comedy"—I Make my First Appearance in "Man and Wife"

[CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURTH]
I Rehearse Endlessly—I Grow Sick with Dread—I Meet with Success in Anne Sylvester

[CHAPTER THIRTY-FIFTH]
I Am Accepted by the Company—I am Warned against Mr. Fisk—I Have an Odd Encounter with Mr. Gould

[CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXTH]
A Search for Tears—I Am Punished in "Saratoga" for the Success of "Man and Wife"—I Win Mr. Daly's Confidence—We Become Friends

[CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENTH]
A Study of Stage-Management—I Am Tricked into Signing a New Contract

[CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTH]
I Go to the Sea-shore—The Search for a "Scar"—I Make a Study of Insanity, and Meet with Success in "L'Article 47"

[CHAPTER THIRTY-NINTH]
I Am too Dull to Understand a Premonition—By Mr. Daly's Side I See the Destruction of the Fifth Avenue Theatre by Fire

[CHAPTER FORTIETH]
We Become "Barn-stormers," and Return to Open the New Theatre—Our Astonishing Misunderstanding of "Alixe," which Proves a Great Triumph

[CHAPTER FORTY-FIRST]
Trouble about Obnoxious Lines in "Madeline Morel"—Mr. Daly's Manipulation of Father X: In Spite of our Anxiety the Audience accepts the Situation and the Play—Mr. Daly gives me the smallest Dog in New York

[CHAPTER FORTY-SECOND]
I am Engaged to Star part of the Season—Mr. Daly Breaks his Contract—I Leave him and under Threat of Injunction—I meet Mr. Palmer and make Contract and appear at the Union Square in the "Wicked World"

[CHAPTER FORTY-THIRD]
We Give a Charity Performance of "Camille," and Are Struck with Amazement at our Success—Mr. Palmer Takes the Cue and Produces "Camille" for Me at the Union Square

[CHAPTER FORTY-FOURTH]
"Miss Multon" Put in Rehearsal—Our Squabble over the Manner of her Death—Great Success of the Play—Mr. Palmer's Pride in it—My Au Revoir

LIFE ON THE STAGE
CHAPTER FIRST

I am Born.

If this simple tale is to be told at all, it may as well begin at the beginning and in the good old-fashioned and best of all ways—thus: Once upon a time in the Canadian city of Toronto, on the 17th of March, the sun rose bright and clear—which was a most surprising thing for the sun to do on St. Patrick's Day, but while the people were yet wondering over it the sunlight disappeared, clouds of dull gray spread themselves evenly over the sky, and then the snow fell—fell fast and furious, quickly whitening the streets and house-tops, softly lining every hollow, and was piling little cushions on top of all the hitching-posts, when the flakes grew larger, wetter, farther apart, and after a little hesitation turned to rain—a sort of walk-trot-gallop rain, which wound up with one vivid flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that fairly shook the city.

Now the Irish, being a brave people and semi-amphibious, pay no heed to wet weather. Usually all the Hibernians residing in a city divide themselves into two bodies on St. Patrick's Day, the ones who parade and the ones who follow the parade; but on this occasion they divided themselves into three bodies—the men who paraded, the men and women who followed the parade, and the Orangemen who made things pleasant for both parties.

As the out-of-time, out-of-tune band turned into a quiet cross-street to lead its following green-bannered host to a broader one, the first brick was thrown—probably by a woman, as it hit no one, but metaphorically it knocked the chip off of the shoulder of every child of Erin. Down fell the banners, up went the fists! Orange and Green were at each other tooth and nail! Hats from prehistoric ages side by side with modern beavers scarcely fifty years old received the hurled brick-bat and went down together!

The band reached the broad avenue alone, and looked back to see the short street a-sway with struggling men, while women holding their bedraggled petticoats up, their bonnets hanging down their backs by green ribbon ties, hovered about the edges of the crowd, making predatory dashes now and then to scratch a face or rescue some precious hat from the mêlée, meanwhile inciting the men to madness by their fierce cries—and in a quiet house, in the very midst of this riot—just before the constabulary charged the crowd—I was born. I don't know, of course, whether I was really intended from the first for that house, or whether the stork became so frightened at the row in the street that he just dropped me from sheer inability to carry me any farther—anyway, I came to a house where trouble and poverty had preceded me, and, worse than both these put together—treachery.

Still, I accepted the situation with indifference. That the cupboard barely escaped absolute emptiness gave me no anxiety, as I had no teeth anyway. As a gentleman with a medicine-case in his hand was leaving the house he paused a moment for the slavey to finish washing away a pool of blood from the bottom step—and then there came that startling clap of thunder. Brand new as I was to this world and its ways, I entered my protest at once with such force and evident wrath that the doctor down-stairs exclaimed: "Our young lady has temper as well as a good pair of lungs!" and went on his way laughing.

And so on that St. Patrick's Day of sunshine, snow, and rain, of riot and bloodshed, in trouble and poverty—I was born.

CHAPTER SECOND

Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger—I Become Acquainted with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions.

Of the Days of St. Patrick that followed, not one found me in the city of my birth—indeed, six months completed my period of existence in the Dominion, and I have known it no more.

Some may think it strange that I mention these early years at all, but the reason for such mention will appear later on. Looking back at them, they seem to divide themselves into groups of four years each. During the first four, my time was principally spent in growing and learning to keep out of people's way. I acquired some other knowledge, too, and little child as I was, I knew fear long before I knew the thing that frightened me. I knew that love for my mother which was to become the passion of my life, and I also knew hunger. But the fear was harder to endure than the hunger—it was so vague, yet so all-encompassing.

We had to flit so often—suddenly, noiselessly. Often I was gently roused from my sleep at night and hastily dressed—sometimes simply wrapped up without being dressed, and carried through the dark to some other place of refuge, from—what? When I went out into the main business streets I had a tormenting barège veil over my face that would not let me see half the pretty things in the shop windows, and I was quick to notice that no other little girl had a veil on. Next I remarked that if a strange lady spoke to me my mother seemed pleased—but if a man noticed me she was not pleased, and once when a big man took me by the hand and led me to a candy store for some candy she was as white as could be and so angry she frightened me, and she promised me a severe punishment if I ever, ever went one step with a strange man again. And so my fear began to take the form of a man, of a big, smiling man—for my mother always asked, when I reported that a stranger had spoken to me, if he was big and smiling.

I had known the sensation of hunger long before I knew the word that expressed it, and I often pressed my hands over my small empty stomach, and cried and pulled at my mother's dress skirt. If there was anything at all to give I received it, but sometimes there was absolutely nothing but a drink of water to offer, which checked the gnawing for a moment or two, and at those times there was a tightening of my mother's trembling lips, and a straight up and down wrinkle between her brows, that I grew to know, and when I saw that look on her face I could not ask for anything more than "a dwink, please."

As an illustration of her almost savage pride and honesty: I one day saw a woman in front of the house buying some potatoes. I knew that potatoes cooked were very comforting to empty stomachs. One or two of them fell to the street during the measuring and I picked one up, and, fairly wild with delight, I scrambled up the stairs with it. But my mother was angry through and through.

"Who gave it to you?" she demanded.

I explained with a trembling voice: "I des' founded it on the very ground—and I'se so hungry!"

But hungry or not hungry, I had to take the potato back: "Nothing in the world could be taken without asking—that was stealing—and she was the only person in the world I had a right to ask anything of!"

It was a bitter lesson, and was rendered more so by the fact that when I carried the tear-bathed potato back to the street and laid it down, neither the woman who bought nor the man who sold was in sight—and, dear Heaven! I could almost have eaten it raw.

But I was learning obedience and self-respect; more than that, I was already acquiring one of the necessary qualities for an actress—the power of close observation.

The next four years (the second group) were the hardest to endure of them all. True, I now had sufficient food and warmth, since my mother had given up sewing for shops—which kept us nearly always hungry—and had found other occupations. But the great object of both our lives was to be together, and there are few people who are willing to employ a woman who has with her a child. And if her services are accepted, even at a reduced salary, it is necessary for that child to be as far as possible neither seen nor heard. Therefore until I was old enough to be admitted into a public school I never knew another child—I never played with any living creature save a remarkable cat, that seemed to have claws all over her, and in my fixed determination to trace her purr and find out where it came from, she buried those claws to the very last one in my fat, investigating little hands.

Meantime my "fear" had assumed the shape and substance of a man, a man who bore a name that should have been loved and honored above all others, for this "bogey" of my baby days—this nightmare and dread—was my own father. When my mother had discovered his treachery—which had not hesitated to boldly face the very altar—she took her child and fled from him, assuming her mother's maiden name as a disguise. But go where she would, he followed and made scenes. Finally, understanding that she was not to be won back by sophistries, he offered to leave her in peace if she would give the child to him. And when that offer was indignantly rejected, he pleasantly informed her that he would make life a curse to her until she gave me up, and that by fair means or by foul he would surely obtain possession of me. Once he did kidnap me, but my mother had found friends by that time, and their pursuit was so swift and unexpected that he had to abandon me.

So, he who should have been the defender and support of my mother—whose arms should have been our shelter from the world—the big, smiling French-Canadian father—became instead our terror and our dread. Therefore when my mother served in varying capacities in other people's homes, and I had to efface myself as nearly as possible, I dared not even go out to walk a little, so great was my mother's fear.

It seems odd, but in spite of my far-reaching memory, I cannot remember when I learned to read. I can recall but one tiny incident relating to the subject of learning. I stood upon a chair and while my hair was brushed and braided I spelled my words, and I had my ears boxed—a custom considered criminal in these better days—because, having successfully spelled "elephant," I came to grief over "mouse," as, according to my judgment, m-o-w-s filled all the requirements of the case. I remember, too, that the punishment made me afraid to ask what "elephant" meant; but I received the impression that it was some sort of a public building.

However, when I was six years old I joyfully betook myself to a primary school, from which I was sent home with a note, saying that "in that department they did not go beyond the 'primer,' and as this little girl reads quite well from a 'reader,' she must have been taught well at home." We were a proud yet disappointed pair, my mother and I, that day.

An odd little incident occurred about that time. One of our hurried flights had ended at a boarding house, and my extreme quietude—unnatural in a child of health and intelligence—attracted the attention of a certain boarder, who was an actress. She was very popular with the public, and both she and her husband were well liked by the people about them. She took a fancy to me, and informing herself that my mother was poor and alone, she offered to adopt me. She stated her position, her income, and her intention of educating me thoroughly. She thought a convent school would be desirable—from ten, say to seventeen.

Perhaps my mother was tempted—she was a fanatic on the question of learning—but, oh! what a big but came in just then: "but when I should have, by God's will, reached the age of seventeen, she (the actress) would place me upon the stage."

"Gracious Heaven! her child on the stage!" my mother was stricken with horror! She scarcely had strength to make her shocked refusal plain enough; and when her employer ventured to remonstrate with her, pointing out the great advantage to me, she made answer: "It would be better for her to starve trying to lead a clean and honorable life, than to be exposed to such publicity and such awful temptations!"

Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!

During those endless months, when I had each day to sit for hours and hours in one particular chair in a corner, well out of the way—sit so long that often when I was lifted down I could not stand at all, my limbs being numbed to absolute helplessness, I had two great days to dream of, to look forward to—Christmas and that wonderful 17th of March, when because it was my birthday all those nice gentlemen, with the funny hats and green collars, walked out behind the band. And I felt particularly well disposed toward those most amusing gentlemen who wore, according to my theory at least, their little girls' aprons tied about their big waists.

I did not like so well the attendant crowd, but then I could not be selfish enough to keep people from looking at "my procession" and enjoying the music that made the blood dance in my own veins, even as my feet danced on the chill pavement.

I always received an orange on that day from my mother, and almost always a book, so it was a great event in my life, and I used to get down my little hat-box and fix the laces in my best shoes days ahead of time that I might be ready to stand on some steps where I could bow and smile to the nice gentlemen who walked out in my honor. Heaven only knows how I got the idea that the procession was meant for me, but it made me very happy, and my heart was big with love and gratitude for those people who took so much trouble for me.

I had but two illusions in the world—Santa Claus and "my procession"—but, alas! on my eighth birthday, when in an outburst of innocent triumph and joy I cried to a grown-up: "Ain't they good—those funny gentlemen—to come and march and play music for my birthday?" I was answered with the assurance that I "was a fool—that no one knew or cared a copper about me—that it was a Saint, a dead and gone man, they marched for!"

All the dance went out of my feet, heavy tears fell fast and stood round and clear on the woolly surface of my cloak, and bending my head low to hide my disappointment, I went slowly home, where the chair seemed harder, the hours longer, and life more bare because I had lost the illusion that had brightened and glorified it.

At the present time, here in my home, there is seated in an arm-chair, a venerable doll. She is a hideous specimen of the beautiful doll of the early "fifties." She sits with her soles well turned up, facing you, her arms hanging from her shoulders in that idiotically helpless "I-give-it-up" fashion peculiar to dolls. With bulging scarlet cheeks, button-hole mouth and flat, blue staring eyes she faces Time and unwinkingly looks him down. To anyone else she is stupidity personified, but to me she speaks, for she came to me on my fourth Christmas, and she is as gifted as she is ugly. Only last birthday—as I straightened out her old, old dress skirt—she asked me if I remembered how I cried, with my face in her lap, over that first loss of an illusion—and I told her quite truly that I remembered well!

CHAPTER THIRD

I Enter a New World—I Know a New Hunger and we Return to Cleveland.

The experiences of the first two of my third group of years have influenced my entire life. Still flying from my seemingly ubiquitous father, my mother after a desperate struggle gained enough money to pay for our journey to what was then called the "far West"—namely, the southwestern part of Illinois. Child-fashion, I was delighted at the prospect of a change, and happy over the belief that I was going to some place where I could be free to go and come like other children, without dreading the appearance of a big, smiling man from any deep doorway or from around the next corner. To tell the truth, that persistent, indestructible smile always seemed an insult added to the injury of his malicious and revengeful conduct.

Then, too, I experienced my first delicious thrill of imaginary terror. In a torn and abandoned old geography I had seen a picture labelled "Prairie." The grass was as high as a man's shoulders, and stealthily emerging from it was a sort of compound animal, neither tiger nor leopard, but with points of resemblance to both. And here every day I was listening to the grown-ups talking of "prairie lands," and how far we might have to drive across the prairie after leaving the train; and I made up my mind that I would hold our umbrella all the time, and when the uncertain beast came out I'd try to stick his eyes with it, and under cover of the confusion we would undoubtedly escape.

That being settled, I could turn all my attention to preparations for the long journey. Dear me, I remember just where each big red rose came on the carpet-bag, and how sorry I was that the tiny brass lock came right in the side of one. It was a large bag and held a great deal, but was so arranged that whatever you wanted was always found at the bottom—whether it was the tooth-brush or a night-gown or a pair of rubbers. It had a sort of dividing wall of linen in its middle, and while one side held clothing, the other side was the commissary department. No buffet-cars then, travellers ran their own buffets, and though the things did not come into actual contact, there was not an article, big or little, in that bag that did not smell of pickles. And once when my mother had hastily attended to my needs in the miserable toilet-room of the car (no sleeper—just a sit-up-all-night affair), my clean stockings, white apron and little handkerchief all exhaled vinegar so strongly that I wrinkled up my nose, exclaiming: "I smell jes' like a pickled little girl—don't I, ma'ma?" And then, when weary and worn and dusty, we left the cars and had to drive some thirty miles, in a carriage of uncertain class, over the open prairie—then smooth and bright and green—I wearily remarked, after a time, that it was a "pretty big lawn, but where was the prairie?" for true to my plan I had secured the umbrella, and being told that I was crossing the prairie then, I was a bitterly disappointed young person. Oh, how I longed to give way to one of those passionate outbursts we so often see children indulge in! Oh, how I wanted to hurl aside the umbrella I had begged for, to fling my weary self down on the floor and cry, and cry! But I dared not—never in my whole life had I ventured on such an exhibition of temper or feeling—so I winked fast and held very still and swallowed hard at the disappointment, which was but the first of such a number of very bitter pills that I was yet to swallow.

But, thank God! if I was easily cast down, I was as easily cheered; and the prairie left behind, the sight of the first orchard we passed, with the soft perfumed snow of the blossoms floating through the rosy sunset light, raised my spirits to an ecstasy of joy; and when our journey ended, at the rough farm-house, with my arm around the surly looking watch-dog, I stood and heard for the first time the mournful cry of the whippoorwill out in the star-pierced dark of the early May night, I thrilled with the unspoken consciousness that this was a new world that I was entering—a lovely, lovely world, that the grown-ups called the "country"!

For the two years I knew it the charm of that backwood life never palled. I had never seen the country before, and I found it a place of beauty and many marvels. I did not miss the fine city shops, for I never had had money to spend in them. I did not miss the people, for they had been nothing to me. And here no day that dawned failed to bring me some new experience. With what awed wonderment I faced the mystery of the springing grain. I saw the seed, hard and dry, fall into the furrowed earth and, a few days later, with gentle strength, tiny pale green spears come pricking through the brown. I learned not to look under the hickory-trees for the oak acorns that I adored. I was soon able to tell the rapidly forming furry green peaches from the smooth young apples, and I literally fell down upon my knees and worshipped before lambs, calves, and colts.

In this new, strange life everyone worked, but they worked for themselves—to use a country expression, no one "hired out." I was a very little girl. I could not spin as could my mother, who had passed her childhood in backwood life. Of course I could not weave, but I was taught to knit my own stockings—such humpy, lumpy knitting! But I was very proud of the accomplishment, even though my mother did have to "turn the heel." Then, too, I with other children at planting-time dropped corn in the sun-warmed furrows, while a man followed behind with a hoe covering it up; and when it had sprouted and was a tempting morsel for certain black robbers of the field, I made a very active and energetic young scare-crow.

Here, too, I became acquainted with children. They were all older than I was, a hearty, healthy, wisely-ignorant lot. They knew so much about farming and so little about anything else. Not one of them could tell a story out of the Bible, and as for the "Pilgrim's Progress," they had never heard tell of it; while Bunyan only meant to them an enlarged toe-joint—not a great author.

The lack of reading matter was the one blemish on my country life. The library, composed of the Bible and the almanac, was not satisfying to my inquiring mind. One paper was taken in by the head of the family—it was a weekly, in every possible sense—but I came to watch eagerly for it, and it filled the family with amazement to see me sit down on the step and gravely wade through its dreary columns—happy if I could catch hold of some idea—some bit of news—some scrap of story; and my farmer host one day at his noon smoke removed his corn-cob pipe from his lips long enough to remark of me: "Dogorne my skin! if that young 'un ain't awake and enj'ien hersel'. Now I allers go ter sleep over that paper mysel'!" So should I—now—I presume.

These children being for-true, real children had no idea of showing courtesy or politeness to a stranger, but they had a very natural yearning to get fun out of that stranger if they could, and so they blithely led me forth to a pasture shortly after our arrival at the farm, and catching a horse they hoisted me up on to its bare, slippery back. I have learned a good bit about horses since then—have hired, borrowed, and bought them—have been to circuses and horse shows, but never since have I seen a horse of such appalling aspect. His eyes were the size of soup-plates, large clouds of smoke came from his nostrils. He had a glass-enamelled surface, and if he was one half as tall as he felt, some museum manager missed a fortune. Then the young fiends, leaving me on my slippery perch, high up near the sky, drew afar off and stood over against the fence and gave me plenty of room—to fall off. But when I suddenly felt the world heave up beneath me, I uttered a wild shriek—clenched my hands in the animal's back hair, and, madly flinging propriety to any point of the compass that happened to be behind me, I cast one pantalet over the enamelled back, and thus astride, safely crossed the pasture—and lo! it was not I who fell, but their faces instead. When they came to take me down, somehow the animal seemed shrunken and I hesitated about leaving it, whereupon the biggest boy said I had "pluck" (I had been frightened nearly to death, but I always could be silent at the proper moment; I was silent then), and he would teach me to ride sideways, for my mother would surely punish me if I sat astride like that; and in a few weeks, thanks to him, I was the one who was oftenest trusted to take the horses to water at noon, riding sideways and always bare-back, mounted on one horse and leading a second to the creek, until all had had their drink. Which habit of riding—from balance—has made me quite independent of stirrups on various occasions since those far-away days.

In the late autumn, these same children taught me where and when and how to find such treasures of the woods as hickory-nuts, chestnuts (rare there), butternuts, and pecan-nuts, while the thickets furnished hazel-nuts and the frost brought sweetness to the persimmon, and consequently pleasure to our palates, but never could I acquire a taste for the "paw-paw," that inane custard-like fruit, often called the American banana.

I helped obtain the roots and barks and nut-shells from which the grown-ups made their dyes. I learned to use a bow and arrow; and on rainy days, having nothing new to read, I learned by heart the best chapters of my own birthday books, and often repeated them to the other children when we cuddled in the hayloft, above the horses.

One day I became too realistic, and in my "flight from my step-mother's home" I fell through the hole where the hay was tossed down to old Jerry's manger. He was a serious-minded and kindly old horse, and did nothing worse than snort a little over the change in his diet, from hay to small girl. My severe bruises would have been borne with fortitude, but when I arose—behold a wretched wandering hen had been in the manger before me, and if one judged from the state of my clothing, the egg she had left behind must have been the size of a melon at least! If that seems an exaggeration, just break an egg in your pocket, if you don't care to sit down on one, and see how far it will spread. Then, indeed, I lifted my voice and wept!

Yes, those were two precious years, in which I learned to love passionately the beauty of the world! The tender, mystic charm of dawn, the pomp and splendor of the setting of the sun! Finding in the tiny perfection of the velvety moss the minute repetition of the form and branching beauty of the stately tree at whose root it grew! Seeing all the beauty of the blue sky and its sailing clouds encompassed by a quivering drop of dew upon a mullein leaf I dimly felt some faint comprehension of the divine satisfaction when the Creator pronounced the work of His hands, "Good!"

From the first my mother had been greatly distressed by the absence of any school to which I might go, and also by her inability to earn money. She had been wise enough not to leave Cleveland without sufficient means to bring us back again—which proved most fortunate. For when quite suddenly we heard of the published death of my father, we immediately returned and she obtained employment, while I was sent to the public school. But, oh, what a poor, meagre course of study I entered on. Reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography—that was all! Only one class in the grammar-school studied history. However, improvements were being discussed, and I remember that three weeks before my final withdrawal from school my mother had to buy me a book on physiology, which was to be taught to the children, who had not even a bowing acquaintance with grammar. But I hungered and thirsted for knowledge—I craved it—longed for it. During the weary years of repression I had fallen back upon imagination for amusement and comfort, and when I was ten my "thinks," as I then called my waking dreams, almost surely took one of these two forms. Since I had abandoned "thinks" about fairies coming to grant my wishes, I always walked out (in my best hat), and saved either an old lady or an old gentleman—sometimes one, sometimes the other—from some imminent peril—a sort of impressionist peril—vague but very terrible! and the rescued one was always tremblingly grateful and offered to reward me, and I always sternly refused to be rewarded, but unbent sufficiently to see the saved one safely to his or her splendid home. There I revelled in furniture, pictures, musical instruments and an assortment of beautiful dogs. On leaving this palatial residence I consented to give my address, and next day the "saved" called on my mother and after some conversation it was settled that I was to go to the convent-school for four years, where I knew the education was generous and thorough, and that languages, music, and painting were all taught. As these "thinks" took place at night after the ill-smelling extinguishment of the candle, I generally fell asleep before, in white robe and a crown of flowers, I gathered up all the prizes and diplomas and things I had earned.

When my mother in the performance of her duties had to accept orders, she received them calmly and as a matter of course—whatever she may have felt in her heart—but I loved and reverenced her so! To me she was the one woman of the world; and when I saw her taking orders from another I flinched and shrank as I would have done beneath the sharp lash of a whip, and then for nights afterward (so soon as I had released my nose, tightly pinched to keep out the smell of candle-smoke), I settled down, with my mother's hand tight clasped in mine, to my other favorite "thinks" wherein I did some truly remarkable embroidery, of such precision of stitch, such perfection of coloring and shading, that when I offered it for sale I was much embarrassed by the numbers of would-be buyers. However, an old lady finally won me away from the store (that old lady was bound to appear in all my "thinks"), and I had to be very firm with her to keep her from over-paying me for the work of my hands.

Then, as I had graciously promised the store-keeper any over-plus of embroidery not needed by the generous old person, I felt my income secure, and hastened to rent two rooms and furnish them, ready to take my astonished mother there—where she could do the ordering herself.

I hung curtains, laid carpets, put dishes in the cupboard, gave one window to my mother and kept one for myself and my very exceptional embroidery; and, though I laugh now, I had then many an hour of genuine happiness, furnishing this imaginary home and refuge for the mother I loved!

CHAPTER FOURTH

I am Led into the Theatre—I Attend Rehearsals—I am Made Acquainted with the Vagaries of Tights.

I was approaching my thirteenth birthday when it came about that a certain ancient boarding-house keeper—far gone in years—required someone to assist her, someone she could trust entirely and leave in charge for a month at a time; and I, not being able to read the future, was greatly chagrined because my mother accepted the offered situation. I was always happiest when she found occupation in a house where there was a library, for people were generally kind to me in that respect and gave me the freedom of their shelves, seeing that I was reverently careful of all books; but in a boarding-house there would be no library, and my heart sank as we entered the gloomy old building.

No, there were no books, but among the boarders there were two or three actors and two actresses—a mother and a daughter. The mother played the "first old women"; the daughter, only a year or two older than I was, played, I was told, "walking-ladies," though what that meant I could not imagine.

The daughter (Blanche) liked me, while I looked upon her with awe, and wondered why she even noticed me. She was very wilful, she would not study anything on earth save her short parts. She had never read a book in her life. When I was home from school I told her stories by the hour, and she would say: "You ought to be in a theatre—you could act!"

And then I would be dumb for a long time, because I thought she was making fun of me. One day I was chewing some gum she gave me—I was not chewing it very nicely, either—and my mother boxed my ears, and Blanche said: "You ought to be in a theatre—you could chew all the gum you liked there!"

And just then my mother was so cruelly overworked, and the spring came in with furious heat, and I felt so big and yet so helpless—a great girl of thirteen to be worked for by another—and the humiliation seemed more than I could bear, and I locked myself in our dreary cupboard of a room, and flung myself upon my knees, and in a passion of tears tried to make a bargain with my God! I meant no irreverence—I was intensely religious. I did not see the enormity of the act—I only knew that I suffered, and that God could help me—so I asked His help! But, instead of stopping there, I cried out to Him this promise: "Dear God! just pity me and show me what to do! Please—please help me to help my mother—and if you will, I'll never say 'No!' to any woman who comes to me all my life long!"

My error in trying to barter with my Maker must have been forgiven, for my prayer was answered within a week, while there are many women scattered through the land who know that I have tried faithfully to keep my part of that bargain, and no woman who has sought my aid has ever been answered with a "No!"

One day Blanche greeted me with the news that extra ballet-girls were wanted, and told me that I must go at once and get engaged.

"But," I said, "maybe they won't take me!"

"Well," answered she, "I've coaxed your mother, and my mother says she'll look out for you—so at any rate go and see. I'll take you to-morrow."

And so dimly, vaguely, I seemed to see a way opening out before me, and again behind the locked door I knelt and said: "Dear God! dear God!" and got no further, because grief has many words and joy has so few.

The school term had closed on Friday, and on Saturday morning, with my heart beating almost to suffocation, I started out to walk to the theatre with Blanche, who had promised to ask Mr. Ellsler (the manager) to take me on in the ballet. When we reached the sidewalk we saw the sky threatened rain and Blanche sent me back for an umbrella. I had none of my own, so I borrowed one from Mrs. Miller (our landlady), and at sight of it my companion broke into laughter. It was a dreadful affair—with a knobby, unkind handle, a slovenly and corpulent body, and a circumference, when open, that suggested the idea that it had been built to shelter not only the landlady, but those wise ones of the boarders who had paid up before the winds rose and the rain fell. Then we proceeded to the old Academy of Music on Bank Street, and entering, went upstairs, and just as we reached the top step a small dark man hurried across the hall and Blanche called quickly: "Oh, Mr. Ellsler—Mr. Ellsler! wait a moment, please—I want to speak to you!"

I could not know that his almost repellent sternness of face concealed a kindness of heart that approached weakness, so when he turned a frowning, impatient face toward us, hope left me utterly, and for a moment I seemed to stand in a great darkness. I think I can do no better than to give Mr. Ellsler's own account of that, our first meeting, as he has given it often since. He says: "I was much put out by a business matter and was hastily crossing the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had another girl in tow; a girl whose appearance in a theatre was so droll I must have laughed, had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was quite short—she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids tied at the ends with ribbon, and a brown straw hat, while she clutched desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw. Her eyes were distinctly blue and were plainly big with fright. Blanche gave her name and said she wanted to go on in the ballet, and I instantly answered she would not do, she was too small—I wanted women, not children, and started to return to my office. Blanche was voluble, but the girl herself never spoke a single word. I glanced toward her and stopped. The hands that clutched the umbrella trembled—she raised her eyes and looked at me. I had noticed their blueness a moment before—now they were almost black, so swiftly had the pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in them. All the father in me shrank under the child's bitter disappointment; all the actor in me thrilled at the power of expression in the girl's face, and I hastily added: 'Oh, well! You may come back in a day or two, and if anyone appears meantime who is short enough to march with you I'll take you on,' and after I got to my office I remembered the girl had not spoken a single word, but had won an engagement—for I knew I should engage her—with a pair of tear-filled eyes."

The following Tuesday, under the protection of the ever-faithful Blanche, I again presented myself and was engaged for the term of two weeks, to go on the stage in the marches and dances of a play called "The Seven Sisters," for which service I was to receive three dollars a week, or fifty cents a night, as there were no matinées then, and so I entered, with wide-astonished eyes, into that dim, dusty, chaotic place known as "behind the scenes"—a strange place, where nothing is and everything may be.

In the daytime I found the stage a thing dead—at night, with the blazing of the gas, it lived! for light is its life, music is its soul, and the play its brain.

Silently and cautiously I walked about, gazing curiously at the "scenes," so fine on one side, so bare and cheap on the other; at the tarlatan "glass windows"; at the green "calico sea," lying flat and waveless on the floor. Everything there pretended to be something else, and at last I said solemnly to Blanche: "Is everything only make-believe in a theatre?"

And she turned her gum to the other side and answered: "Yes, everything's make-believe—except salary day!"

Then came the rehearsal—everything was military just then—and there was a Zouave drill to learn, as well as a couple of dances. The women and girls who had been engaged were not the very nicest people in the world, though they were the best to be found at such short notice; and Mrs. Bradshaw told me not to stand about with them, but to come to her as soon as my share in the work was over. "But," said this wise woman, "don't fail in politeness to them; for nothing can hold a person so far off as extreme politeness."

To me the manual of arms was mere child's play, and the drill a veritable delight. The second day I scribbled down the movements in the order that they had been made, and learned them by heart, with the result that on the third day I sat aside chewing gum, while the stage-manager raved over the rest. Then the star—Mr. McDonough—came along and furiously demanded to know why I was not drilling. "The gentleman sent me out of the ranks, sir," I answered, "because he said I knew the manual and drill!"

"Oh, indeed! well, there's not one of you that knows it—and you never will know it! You're a set of numbskulls! Here!" he cried, catching up a rifle, "take hold of this—get up here—and let's see how much you know! Now, then, shoulder arms!"

And standing alone—burning with blushes, blinded with tears of mortification—I was put through my paces with a vengeance; but I really knew the manual as thoroughly as I knew the drill, and when it was over Mr. McDonough took the rifle from me, and exclaimed: "Well, saucer-eyes, you do know it! I'm d——d if you don't! and I'm sorry, little girl, I spoke so roughly to you!"

He held out his fat white hand to me, and as I took it he added: "You ought to stay in this business—you've got your head with you!"

It was a small matter, of course, but there was a faint hint of triumph in it, and the savor was very pleasant to me.

Naturally, with a salary of but three dollars a week, we turned to the management for our costumes. I wonder what the danseuse of to-day would think of the costume worn by her sister of the "sixties"? Now her few gauzy limb-betraying skirts reach but to the middle of the thigh; her scrap of a bodice, cut far below the shoulder blades at the back, being absolutely sleeveless, is precariously held in place by a string or two of beads. To be sure, she is apt to wear a collar of blazing diamonds, instead of the simple band of black velvet that used to be sufficient ornament for the peerless Bonfanti and the beautiful and modest Betty Rigl, who in their graceful ignorance of "splits" and athletic "tours de force," managed in their voluminous and knee-long skirts to whirl, to glide, to poise and float, to show, in fact, the poetry of motion.

But we, this untrained ballet, were not Bonfantis nor Morlachis, and we wore our dancing clothes with a difference. In one dance we were supposed to be fairies. We wore flesh-colored slippers and tights. It took one full week of our two weeks' engagement to learn how to secure these treacherous articles, so that they would remain smooth and not wrinkle down somewhere or twist about. One girl never learned, and to the last added to the happiness of the public by ambling about on a pair of legs that looked as if they had been done up in curl papers the night before.

We each had seven white tarlatan skirts, as full as they could be gathered—long enough to come a little below the knee. Our waists were also flesh-colored, and were cut fully two or three inches below our collar-bones, so you see there was plenty of cloth at our backs to hook our very immature wings to. We had wreaths of white roses on our heads—Blanche, who was very frank, said they looked like wreaths of turnips—and garlands of white roses to wave in the dance. I remember the girl with the curled legs was loathed by all because she lassoed everyone she came near with her garland—so you see we were very decorous fairies, whether we were decorative or not.

Of course we were rather substantial, and our wings did seem too thin and small to sustain us satisfactorily. One girl took hers off in the dressing-room and remarked contemptuously that "they couldn't lift her cat even!"

But another, who was dictatorial and also of a suspicious nature, answered savagely: "You don't know nothing about wings—and you haven't got no cat, nohow, and you know it—so shut up!" and the conversation closed.

In our second costume we were frankly human. We still wore dancing skirts, but we were in colors, and we had, of course, shed our wings—nasty, scratchy things they were, I remember. Then for the drill and march we wore the regular Fire Zouave uniform.

It was all great fun for me—you remember I was not stage-struck. Dramatically speaking, I was not yet born—I had neither ambition nor fear—I was simply happy because I was going to earn that, to me, great sum of money, and was going to give it to my mother, and planned only what I should say to her, and had no thought at all of the theatre or anything or any person in it.

The donning of fleshings for the first time is an occasion of anxiety to anyone, man or woman. I, however, approached the subject of tights with an open mind, and Blanche freely gave me both information and advice. She chilled my blood by describing the mortifying mishaps, the dread disasters these garments had brought to those who failed to understand them. She declared them to be tricky, unreliable, and malicious in the extreme.

"There's just one way to succeed with 'em," she said, "and that's by bullying 'em. Show you're afraid and they will slip and twist and wrinkle down and make you a perfect laughing-stock. You must take your time, you know, at first, and fit 'em on very carefully and smoothly over your feet and ankles and up over your knees. See that they are nice and straight or you'll look as if you were walking on corkscrews, but after that bully 'em—yank and pull and drag 'em, and when you have 'em drawn up as tight as you can draw 'em, go at 'em and pull 'em up another inch at least. They'll creak and snap and pretend they're going to tear, but don't you ever leave your dressing-room satisfied, unless you feel you can't possibly get down-stairs without going sideways."

"But," I remonstrated, "they'll break and let my knees through!"

"Oh, no they won't!" she cheerfully answered. "They'll make believe they're going to split at the knee, of course, but instead they'll just keep as safe and smooth as the skin on your arm. But, for Heaven's sake, don't be afraid of 'em!"

And I gravely promised to be as bold as I possibly could in my first encounter with the flesh-colored terrors.

CHAPTER FIFTH

I Receive my First Salary—I am Engaged for the Coming Season.

At last the night came. Hot? Oh, my, hot it was! and we were so crowded in our tiny dressing-room that some of us had to stand on the one chair while we put our skirts on. The confusion was great, and I was glad to get out of the room, down-stairs, where I went to show myself to Mrs. Bradshaw or Blanche, to see if I was all right. They looked at me, and after a hopeless struggle with their quivering faces they burst into shrieks of laughter. With trembling hands I clutched my tarlatan skirts and peering down at my tights, I groaned: "Are they twisted, or run down, or what?"

But it was not the tights, it was my face. I knew you had to put on powder because the gas made you yellow, and red because powder made you ghastly, but it had not occurred to me that skill was required in applying the same, and I was a sight to make any kindly disposed angel weep! I had not even sense enough to free my eyelashes from the powder clinging to them. My face was chalk white and low down on my cheeks were nice round bright red spots.

Mrs. Bradshaw said: "With your round blue eyes and your round white-and-red face, you look like a cheap china doll! Come here, my dear!"

She dusted off a few thicknesses of the powder, removed the hard scarlet spots, took a great soft hare's foot, which she rubbed over some pink rouge, and then holding it in the air she proceeded: "To-morrow, after you have walked to get a color, go to your glass and see where that color shows itself. I think you will find it high on your cheek, coming up close under the eye and growing fainter toward the ear. I'll paint you that way to-night on chance. You see my color is low on my cheek. Of course when you are making-up for a character part you go by a different rule, but when you are just trying to look pretty be guided by nature. Now——"

I felt the soft touch of the hare's foot on my burning cheeks; then she gave me a tooth-brush, which had black on it, and bade me draw it across my lashes. I did so and was surprised at the amount of powder it removed. She touched her little finger to some red pomade, and said: "Thrust out your under lip—no, not like a kiss—that makes creases—make a sulky lip—so!"

She touched my lip with her finger, then she drew back and laughed again, in a different way. She drew me to the glass, and said, "Look!"

I looked and cried: "Oh—oh! Mrs. Bradshaw, that girl doesn't look a bit like me—she's ever so much nicer!"

In that lesson on making-up was the beginning and the ending of my theatrical instruction. What I have learned since then has been by observation, study, and direct inquiry—but never by instruction, either free or paid for.

Now, while I was engaged to go on with the crowd, fate willed after all that I should have an independent entrance for my first appearance on the stage. The matter would be too trivial to mention were it not for the influence it had upon my future. One act of the play represented the back of a stage during a performance. The scenes were turned around with their unpainted sides to the public. The scene-shifters and gas-men were standing about—everything was going wrong. The manager was giving orders wildly, and then a dancer was late. She was called frantically and finally when she appeared on the run, the manager caught her by the shoulders, rushed her across the stage and fairly pitched her on the imaginary stage—to the great amusement of the audience.

The tallest and prettiest girl in the ballet had been picked out to do this bit of work, and she had been rehearsed and rehearsed as if she were preparing for the balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet"; and day after day the stage-manager would groan: "Can't you run? Did you never run? Imagine the house a-fire and that you are running for your life!"

At last, on that opening night, we were all gathered ready for our first entrance and dance, which followed a few moments after the incident I have described. The tall girl had a queer look on her face as she stood in her place—her cue came, but she never moved.

I heard the rushing footsteps of the stage-manager: "That's you!" he shouted; "go on! go on, run!"

Run? She seemed to have grown fast to the floor. We heard the angry aside of the actor on the stage: "Send someone on here—for Heaven's sake!"

"Are you going on?" cried the frantic prompter.

She dropped her arms limply at her sides and whispered: "I—I—c-a-n-t!"

He turned, and as he ran his imploring eye over the line of faces, each girl shrank back from it. He reached me—I had no fear, and he saw it. "Can you go on there?" he cried. I nodded. "Then for God's sake go!"

I gave a bound and a rush that carried me half, across the stage before the manager caught me—and so I made my entrance on the stage, and danced and marched and sang with the rest, and all unconsciously took my first step upon the path that I was to follow through shadow and through sunshine—to follow by steep and stony places, over threatening bogs, through green and pleasant meadows—to follow steadily and faithfully for many and many a year to come.

On our first salary day, to the surprise of all concerned, I did not go to claim my week's pay. To everyone who spoke to me of the matter, I simply answered: "Oh, that will be all right." When the second day came I was the last to present myself at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler was there and he opened the door and asked me to come in. As I signed my name on the salary list I hesitated perceptibly and he laughingly said: "Don't you know your own name?" Now on the first day of all, when the stage-manager had taken down our names, I had been gazing at the scenery and when he called out: "Little girl, what is your name?" I had not heard, and someone standing by had said: "Her name is Clara—Clara Morris, or Morrisey, or Morrison, or something like that," and he dropped the last syllable from my name Morrison, and wrote me down Morris; so when Mr. Ellsler put his question, "Don't you know your name?" that was certainly the moment when I should have spoken—but I was too shy, and there and thereafter held my peace, and have been in consequence Clara Morris ever since.

I having signed for and received my two weeks' salary, Mr. Ellsler asked why I had not come the week before, and I told him I preferred to wait because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. And he gravely nodded and said "it was rather a large sum to have in hand at one time"—and, though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not suspect him of making fun of me.

Then he said: "You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went on alone and unrehearsed the other night you proved you had both adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theatre. Will you come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in September next?"

I think it must have been my ears that finally stopped my ever-widening smile while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.

"To be sure," said he, "to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her, then, and let me know whether you can or not."

Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe that Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death everyone must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that 90-in-the-shade summer day, racing along in a whirl of short skirts, with the boyish, self-kicking gait peculiar to running girls of thirteen.

One man, a tailor, ran out hatless and coatless and looked up the street anxiously in the direction from which I came. A big boy on the corner yelled after me: "S-a-a-y, Sis, where's the fire?" but you see they did not know that I was carrying home my first earnings—that I was clutching six damp one-dollar bills in the hands that had been so empty all my life! Poor little hands that had never held a greater sum than one big Canadian penny, that had never held a dollar bill till they had first earned it. But if the boy was blind to what I held, so was I blind to what the future held—which made us equal.

I had meant to take off my hat and smooth my hair, and in a decorous and proper manner approach my mother and deliver my nice little speech, and then hand her the money. But, alas! as I rushed into the house I came upon her unexpectedly—for, fearing dinner was going to be late, she was hurrying things by shelling a great basket of peas as she sat by the dining-room window. At sight of her tired face, all my nicely planned speech disappeared. I flung my arm about her neck, dropped the bills on top of the empty pods, and cried with beautiful lucidity: "Oh, mother! that's mine—and it's all yours!"

She kissed me, but to my grieved amazement put the money back into my hand, folding my four stiff, unwilling fingers over it, as she said: "No, you have earned this money yourself—you are the only one who has the right to use it—you are to do with it exactly as you please."

And while tears of disappointment were yet swimming in my eyes, triumph sprang up in my heart at her last words; for if I could do exactly as I pleased, why, after all, she should have the new summer dress she needed so badly. So I took the money to our room, and having secreted it in the most intricate and involved manner I could think of, I returned and laid Mr. Ellsler's offer before my mother, who at first hesitated, but learning that Mrs. Bradshaw was engaged for another season, she finally consented, and I rushed back to the theatre, where, red and hot and out of breath, I was engaged for the ballet for the next season. After this I was conscious of a new feeling, which I would have found it very hard to explain then. It was not importance, it was not vanity, it was a pleasant feeling, it lifted the head and gave one patience to bear calmly many things that had been very hard to bear. I know now it was the self-respect that comes to everyone who is a bread-winner.

Directly after breakfast next day I was off to get my mother's dress. I went quite alone, and my head was well in the air; for this was indeed an important occasion. I looked long and felt gravely at the edges of the goods, I did not know what for, but I had seen other people do it, and when my lavender-flowered muslin was cut off, done up and paid for, I found quite a large hole in my six dollars; for it was war time, and anything made of cotton cost a dreadful price. But, good Heaven! how happy I was, and how proud that I should get a dress for my mother, instead of her getting one for me! Undoubtedly, had there been a fire just then, I would have risked my life to save that flowered muslin gown.

I had not been more than two or three days in the theatre when I discovered that its people seemed to be divided into two distinct parties—the guyers and the guyed—those who laughed and those who were laughed at. All my life I have had a horror of practical joking, and I very quickly decided I would not be among the guyed. I had borrowed many of Mrs. Bradshaw's play books to read, and often found in the directions for costumes the old word "ibid." "Count Rudolph—black velvet doublet, hose and short cloak. Count Adolph, ibid." So when the property-man, an incorrigible joker, asked me to go home and borrow Mrs. Bradshaw's ibid for him, I simply looked at him and smiled a broad, silent smile and never moved a peg. He gave me a sharp look, then affecting great anger at my laziness, he wrote a request for an ibid and gave it to the fattest girl in the crowd, and she carried it to Mrs. Bradshaw, who wrote on it that her ibid was at Mrs. Dickson's, and the fat girl went to Mrs. Dickson's, who said she had lent it to Mr. Lewis—so the poor fat goose was kept waddling through the heat, from one place to another, until she was half dead, to the great enjoyment of the property-man.

Next day he was very busy, when, glancing up, he saw me looking on at his work. Instantly he caught up a bottle, and said: "Run upstairs to the paint-frame (three flights up) and ask the painter to put a little ad-libitum in this bottle for me—there's a good girl!"

Now I did not yet know what ad-libitum meant, but I was a very close observer, and I saw the same malicious twinkle in his eye that had shone there when he had sent the fat girl on her hot journey, and once more I slowly chewed my gum, and smiled my wide, unbelieving smile. He waited a moment, but as I did not touch the bottle he tossed it aside, saying: "What a suspicious little devil you are!"

But when a man wanted me to blow down a gun-barrel next morning, the property-man exclaimed: "Here, you! let saucer-eyes alone! I don't know whether she gets her savey out of her head or chews it out of her gum, but she don't guy worth a cent, so you needn't try to put anything on to her!"

And from that day to this I have been free from the attacks of the practical joker.

CHAPTER SIXTH

The Regular Season Opens—I have a Small Part to Play—I am among Lovers of Shakespeare—I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the Charm.

Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to learn something of another world—fairy-like in fascination, marvellous in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns, such women of splendid chill chastity, fierce ambition, thistle-down lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think of.

Perhaps if I had attempted simply to read Shakespeare at that time, I might have fallen short both in profit and in pleasure; but it was the hearing him that roused my attention. There was such music in the sound of the words, that the mind was impelled to study out their meaning. It seems to me that a human voice is to poetry what a clear even light is to a reader, making each word give up its full store of meaning.

At that time Forrest, crowned and wrapped in royal robes, was yet tottering on his throne. Charlotte Cushman was the Tragic Queen of the stage. Mr. James Murdoch, frail and aging, but still acting, was highly esteemed. Joseph Jefferson, E. L. Davenport, J. K. Hackett, Edwin Adams, John E. Owens, Dan. Setchell, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline, Mrs. D. P. Bowers, Miss Lucille Western, Miss Maggie Mitchell, Mr. and Mrs. Conway, Matilda Heron, Charles Couldock, Joseph Proctor, Mr. and Mrs. Albaugh, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, the Webb Sisters, Kate Reynolds, were all great favorites, not pausing to mention many more, while Edwin Booth, the greatest light of all, was rising in golden glory in the East.

Of the above-mentioned twenty-eight stars, eighteen acted in Shakespeare's plays. All stars played a week's engagement—many played two weeks, therefore at least twenty-four of our forty-two week season was given over to Shakespearean productions, and every actor and actress had the Bard at their tongue's tip.

In the far past the great disgrace of our profession was the inebriety of its men. At the time I write of, the severity of the managers had nearly eradicated the terrible habit, and I never saw but two of that class of brilliant actor-drunkards, beloved of newspaper story writers, who made too much of their absurd vagaries.

Looking back to the actors of '65, I can't help noticing the difference between their attitude of mind toward their profession, and that of the actor of to-day. Salaries were much smaller then, work was harder, but life was simpler. The actor had no social standing; he was no longer looked down upon, but he was an unknown quantity; he was, in short, an actor pure and simple. He had enthusiasm for his profession—he lived to act, not merely living by acting. He had more superstition than religion, and no politics at all; but he was patriotic and shouldered his gun and marched away in the ranks as cheerfully as any other citizen soldier.

But above all and beyond all else, the men and women respected their chosen profession. Their constant association of mind with Shakespeare seemed to have given them a certain dignity of bearing as well as of speech.

To-day our actors have in many cases won some social recognition, and they must therefore give a portion of their time to social duties. They are clubmen and another portion of their time goes in club lounging. They draw large salaries and too frequently they have to act in long running plays, that are made up of smartish wit and cheapest cynicism—mere froth and frivolity, while the effective smashing of the Seventh Commandment has been for so long a time the principal motif of both drama and farce, that one cannot wonder much at the general tone of flippancy prevailing among the theatrical people of to-day. They guy everything and everybody, and would jeer at their profession as readily as they would at an old man on the street wearing a last year's hat.

They are sober, they are honest, they are generous, but they seem to have grown utterly flippant, and I can't help wondering if this alteration can have come about through the change in their mental pabulum.

At all events, as I watched and listened in the old days, it seemed to me they were never weary of discussing readings, expressions, emphasis, and action. One would remark, say at a rehearsal of "Hamlet," that Macready gave a certain line in this manner, and another would instantly express a preference for a Forrest—or a Davenport—rendering, and then the argument would be on, and only a call to the stage would end the weighing of words, the placing of commas, etc.

I well remember my first step into theatrical controversy. "Macbeth" was being rehearsed, and the star had just exclaimed: "Hang out our banners on the outward walls!" That was enough—argument was on. It grew animated. Some were for: "Hang out our banners! on the outward walls the cry is still: they come!" while one or two were with the star's reading.

I stood listening and looking on and fairly sizzling with hot desire to speak, but dared not take the liberty, I stood in such awe of my elders. Presently the "old-man" turned and, noticing my eagerness, laughingly said: "Well, what is it, Clara? you'll have a fit if you don't ease your mind with speech."

"Oh, Uncle Dick," I answered, my words fairly tripping over each other in my haste. "I have a picture home, I cut it out of a paper, it's a picture of a great castle, with towers and moats and things, and on the outer walls there are men with spears and shields, and they seem to be looking for the enemy, and, Uncle Dick, the banner is floating over the high tower!"

"Where it ought to be," interpolated the old gentleman, who was English.

"So," I went on, "don't you think it ought to be read: 'Hang out our banners! on the outward walls'—the outward walls, you know, is where the lookout are standing—'the cry—is still, they come!'"

A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle Dick patted me very kindly on the shoulder, and said: "Good girl! you stick to your picture—it's right and so are you. Many people read the line that way, but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to follow."

And I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle old man's approval. But that same night I came quite wofully to grief. I had been one of the crowd of "witches"; I had also had my place at that shameless papier-maché banquet given by Macbeth to his tantalized guests, and then, being off duty, was, as usual, planted in the entrance, watching the acting of the grown-up and the grown-great. Lady Macbeth was giving the sleep-walking scene. Her method was of the old, old school. She spoke at almost the full power of her lungs, throughout that mysterious, awe-inspiring sleep-walking scene. It jarred upon my feelings—I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone, and when the memory-haunted woman roared out: "Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" I remarked, sotto voce: "Did you expect to find ink in him?"

A sharp "ahem!" right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I turned to face—oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me, and began: "Since when have the ladies of the ballet taken to criticising the work of the stars?"

Humbly enough, I said: "I beg your pardon, sir, I was just talking to myself, that was all."

But he went on: "Oh, you would not criticize a reading, unless you could better it—so pray favor us with your ideas on this speech!"

Each sneering word cut me to the heart. Tears filled my eyes. I struggled hard to keep them from falling, while I just murmured: "I beg your pardon!" Again he demanded my reading, saying they were not "too old to learn," and in sheer desperation, I exclaimed: "I was only speaking to myself, but I thought Lady Macbeth was amazed at the quantity of blood that flowed from the body of such an old man—for when you get old, you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only just thought, that as the 'sleeping men were laced,' and the knives 'smeared,' and her hands 'bathed' with it, she might have perhaps whispered: 'Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' I didn't mean an impertinence!" and down fell the tears, for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.

He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said: "Humph!" and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and cried and cried, and vowed that never, never again would I talk to myself—in the theatre at all events. I mention these incidents to show how quickly I came under the influence of these Shakespeare-studying men and women, some of whom had received their very adequate education from him alone.

It was odd to hear how they used his words and expressions in their daily conversation. 'Twas not so much quoting him intentionally, as it was an unconscious incorporation into their own language of Shakespeare's lines.

Tramps were to them almost always "vagrom men." When one did some very foolish thing, he almost surely begged to be "written down an ass." The appearance of a pretty actress in her new spring or fall gown was as surely hailed with: "The riches of the ship have come on shore!"

I saw a pet dog break for the third time from restraint to follow his master, who put his hand on the animal's head and rather worriedly remarked: "'The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble—which still'" (with a big sigh) "'we thank as love!' But you'll have to go back, old fellow, all the same." If someone obliged you, and you expressed the fear that you had given him trouble, he would be absolutely certain to reply, pleasantly and quite honestly: "The labor we delight in physics pain!" And so on and on unendingly. And I almost believe that had an old actor seen these three great speeches: The "seven ages" of man, "To be or not to be!" and "Othello's occupation's gone," grouped together, he would have fallen upon his knees and become an idolator there and then.

Yes, I found them odd people, but I liked them. The world was brightening for me, and I felt I had a right to my share of the air and light, and as much of God's earth as my feet could stand upon.

I had had a little part entrusted to me, too, the very first week of the season. A young backwoods-boy, Tom Bruce, by name, and I had borrowed some clothes and had slammed about with my gun, and spoken my few words out loud and clear, and had met with approving looks, if not words, but not yet was the actress aroused in me, I was still a mere school-girl reciting her lessons. My proudest moment had been when I was allowed to go on for the longest witch in the cauldron scene in "Macbeth." Perhaps I might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say: "That child will never speak those lines in the world!" and the leading man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years old, and had to be called a "child!"

I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines, at all hours, under all kinds of circumstances, so that nothing should be able to frighten me at night. And then, with my paste-board crown and white sheet and petticoat, I boiled-up in the cauldron and gave my lines well enough for the manager (who was Hecate just then) to say low, "Good! Good!" and the leading man next night asked me to take care of his watch and chain during his combat scene, and my pride of bearing was most unseemly, and the other ballet-girls loved me not at all, for you see they, too, knew he was six feet tall and handsome.

CHAPTER SEVENTH

I find I am in a "Family Theatre"—I Fare Forth away from my Mother, and in Columbus I Shelter under the wing of Mrs. Bradshaw.

This theatre in which I found myself was, in professional parlance, a family theatre, a thing abhorred by many, especially by actresses. Not much wonder either, for even as the green bay tree flourisheth in the psalm, so does nepotism flourish in the family theatre; and when it's a case of the managerial Monsieur, Madame, et Bébés all acting, many are the tears, sobs, and hot words that follow upon the absorption by these three of all the good parts, while all the poor ones are placed with strictest justice where they belong. At that time men and women were engaged each for a special "line of business," and to ask anyone to act outside of his "line" was an offence not lightly passed over.

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with theatrical terms of procedure, I will state that a company was generally made up of a leading man (heroes, of course), first old man, second old man, heavy man, first comedian, second comedian, juvenile man, walking gentleman, and utility man.

That term, "heavy man," of course had no reference to the actor's physical condition, but it generally implied a deep voice, heavy eyebrows, and a perfect willingness to stab in the back or smilingly to poison the wine of the noblest hero or the fairest heroine in the business; so the professional player of villains was a heavy man.

The juvenile man may have left juvenility far, far behind him in reality, but if his back was flat, his eyes large and hair good; he would support old mothers, be falsely accused of thefts, and win wealthy sweethearts in last acts, with great éclat—as juvenile men were expected to do.

Walking gentlemen didn't walk all the time; truth to tell, they stood about and pretended a deep interest in other people's affairs, most of the time. They were those absent Pauls or Georges that are talked about continually by sweethearts or friends or irate fathers, and finally appear just at the end of everything, simply to prove they really do exist, and to hold a lady's hand, while the curtain falls on the characters, all nicely lined up and bowing like toy mandarins.

The utility man was generally not a man, but a large, gloomy boy, whose mustache would not grow, and whose voice would crack over the few lines he was invited to address to the public. He sometimes led mobs, but more often made brief statements as to the whereabouts of certain carriages—and therein laid his claim to utility.

Then came the leading lady, the first old woman (who was sometimes the heavy woman), the first singing soubrette, the walking ladies, the second soubrette (and boys' parts), the utility woman, and the ladies of the ballet. These were the principal "lines of business," and in an artistic sense they bound actors both hand and foot; so utterly inflexible were they that the laws of the Medes and Persians seemed blithe and friendly things in comparison.

"Oh, I can't play that; it's not in my line!" "Oh, yes, I sing, but the singing don't belong to my line!" "I know, he looks the part and I don't, but it belongs to my line!" and so, nearly every week, some performance used to be marred by the slavish clinging to these defined "lines of business."

Mr. Augustin Daly was the first manager who dared to ignore the absolute "line." "You must trust my judgment to cast you for the characters you are best suited to perform, and you must trust my honor not to lower or degrade you, by casting you below your rightful position, for I will not be hampered and bound by any fixed 'lines of business.'" So said he to all would-be members of his company. The pill was a trifle bitter in the swallowing, as most pills are, but it was so wholesome in its effect that ere long other managers were following Mr. Daly's example.

But to return to our mutton. If the family theatre was disliked by those who had already won recognized positions, it was at least an ideal place in which a young girl could begin her professional life. The manager, Mr. John A. Ellsler, was an excellent character-actor as well as a first old man. His wife, Mrs. Effie Ellsler, was his leading woman—his daughter Effie, though not out of school at that time, acted whenever there was a very good part that suited her. The first singing soubrette was the wife of the prompter and the stage-manager. The first old woman was the mother of the walking lady, and so it came about that there was not even the pink flush of a flirtation over the first season, and, though another season was shaken and thrilled through and through by the elopement and marriage of James Lewis with Miss Frankie Hurlburt, a young lady from private life in Cleveland, yet in all the years I served in that old theatre, no real scandal ever smirched it.

True, one poor little ballet-girl fell from our ranks and was drawn into that piteous army of women, who, with silk petticoats and painted cheeks, seek joy in the bottom of the wine cup. Poor little soul! how we used to lock the dressing-room door and lower our voices when we spoke of having seen her.

I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the dear woman who watched over me that first season—Mrs. Bradshaw, one of the most versatile, most earnest, most devoted actresses I ever saw, and a good woman besides.

She had known sorrow, trouble, and loss. She was widowed, she had two children to support unaided, but she made moan to no one. She worked early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed. Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.

It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are absolutely without the sense of order. Their irregular hours, their unsettled mode of life, camping out a few days in this hotel and then in that in a measure explain it, but Mrs. Bradshaw set an example of neat orderliness that was well worth following.

"I can't see," she used to say, "why an actress should be a slattern."

Then if anyone murmured: "Early rehearsals, great haste, you know!" she would answer: "You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal—then get up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an actress does is commented upon, and as she is more or less an object of suspicion, her conduct should be even more rigidly correct than that of other women." She had been a beauty in her youth, as her regular features still proclaimed, and though her figure had become almost Falstaffian, her graceful arm movements and the dignity of her carriage saved her from being in the slightest degree grotesque. The secret of her smiling contentment was her honest love for her work.

We had one taste in common—this experienced woman and my now fourteen-year-old self—books! books! and yet books, we read. I borrowed from my friends and she also read—she borrowed from her friends and I, too, read, and she came to speak of them, and then of her own ideas, and so I found that this woman, already on the way to age, who was so poor and hard-working, and had nothing to look forward to but work, was yet cheerfully contented, because she loved the work—yes, and honored it, and held her head high, because she was an actress with a clean reputation!

"Study your lines—speak them with exactitude, just as they are written!" she used to say to me, with a sort of passion in her voice.

"Don't just gather the idea of a speech, and then use your own words, that's an infamous habit. The author knew what he wanted you to say—for God's sake honor the poor dead writer's wishes and speak his lines exactly as he wrote them! If he says: 'My lord the carriage waits!' don't you go on and say: 'My lord the carriage is waiting!'"

I almost believe she would have fallen in a dead faint had she been prompted, and to have been late to a rehearsal would have been a shame greater than she could have borne. To this woman's example, I owe the strict business-like habits of attention to study and rehearsals that have won so much praise for me from my managers.

Had Mr. Ellsler's intention of taking his company to another city for a great part of the season been known in advance, my mother would never have given consent to my membership; but the season was three months old before we knew that we were to be transferred to Columbus, the State capital, where we were to remain, while the Legislature sat in large arm-chairs, passing bad bills, and killing good ones, for some three months or more—at least that was the ordinary citizen's opinion of the conduct of the State's wise men. It seemed to me that when a man paid his taxes he felt he had purchased the right to grumble at his representatives to his heart's content.

But that move to Columbus was a startling event in my life. It meant leaving my mother and standing quite alone. She was filled with anxiety, principally for my physical welfare, but I felt, every now and then, my grief and fright pierced through and through with a delicious thrill of importance. I was going to be just like a grown-up, and would decide for myself what I should wear. I might even, if I chose to become so reckless, wear my Sunday hat to a rehearsal; and when my cheap little trunk came, with C. M. on the end, showing it was my very own, I stooped down and hugged it. But later, when my mother with a sad face separated my garments from her own, taking them from her trunk, where they had always rested before, I burst into sobs and tears of utter forlornness.

The Columbus trip had a special effect upon the affairs of the ballet. We had received $3 a week salary, but every one of us had had some home assistance. Now we were going to a strange city, and no one on earth could manage to live on such a salary as that, so our stipend was raised to $5 a week, and the three of us (we were but three that season) set to work trying to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board-bill, her basket-bill, her wash-bill, and all the small expenses of the theatre—powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc., to say nothing at all of shoes and clothing—all out of $5 a week.

Of course there was but one way to do it, and that was by doubling-up and sharing a room with some one, and that first season I was very lucky. Mrs. Bradshaw found a house where the top floor had been finished off as one great long room, running the entire length of the building from gable to gable, and she offered me a share in it.

Oh, I was glad! Blanche and I had one-half the room, and Mrs. Bradshaw and the irrepressible little torment and joy of her life, small Jack, had the other half. No wonder I grew to reverence her, whose character could bear such intimate association as that. I don't know what her religious beliefs were. She read her Bible Sundays, but she never went to church, neither did she believe in a material hell; but it was not long before I discovered that when I said my prayers over in my corner, she paused in whatever she was doing, and remained with downcast eyes—a fact that made me scramble a bit, I'm afraid.

There was but one thing in our close companionship that caused her pain, and that was the inevitable belief of strangers, that I was her daughter and Blanche her protegée—they being misled by the difference in our manner toward her. In the severity of my upbringing I had been taught that it was nothing short of criminal to be lacking in respect for those who were older than myself; therefore I was not only strictly obedient to her expressed wishes, but I rose when she entered a room, opened and closed doors, placed chairs at table, gave her precedence on all occasions, and served her in such small ways as were possible; while Blanche ignored her to such a degree that one might have mistaken her for a stranger to our little party.

Poor mother! the tears stood thick in her brave eyes when the landlady, on our third day in her house, remarked to her, patting me on the shoulder as she spoke: "You have a most devoted little daughter, here!"

And there was a distinct pause, before she answered, gently: "You mistake—I have a devoted little friend here, in Clara, but Blanche is my daughter!" She was a singular being, that daughter. It is seldom indeed that a girl, who is not bad, can yet be such a thorn in the side of a mother. She was a most disconcerting, baffling creature—a tricksy, elfish spirit, that delighted in malicious fun. Pleasure-loving, indolent, and indifferent alike to praise or blame, she (incredible as it seems) would willingly give up a good part to save herself the trouble of playing it. I recall a trick she once performed in my favor. I thought the Player-Queen in "Hamlet" was a beautiful part, and I hungered to play it; but it belonged to Blanche, and, of course, she was cast for it; but said she: "You could have it, for all I'd care!" Then, suddenly, she added: "Say, you may play it with the next Hamlet that comes along!"

I pointed out the impossibility of such an assertion coming true, but she grinned widely at me and chewed her gum as one who knew many things beyond my ken, and counselled me to "watch out and see what happened." I watched out, and this happened:

When the mimic-play was going on before the King and Court, my impish friend Blanche, as the Player-Queen, should have said: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a widow, ever I be wife!"

Instead of which, loudly and distinctly, she proclaimed: "Both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife, if once a wife, ever I be widowed!"

Hamlet rolled over on his face, Queen Gertrude (Mrs. Bradshaw) groaned aloud, Polonius (Mr. Ellsler) threatened discharge, under cover of the laughter of the audience, while guilty Blanche grinned in impish enjoyment of her work, and next "Hamlet" I was cast for the Player-Queen, to punish Blanche. To punish her, indeed—she was as merry as a sand-boy, standing about chewing gum and telling stories all the evening.

The "tatting" craze was sweeping over the country then, everybody wore tatting and almost everybody made it. I worked day and night at it, tatting at rehearsal and between scenes, and lady-stars often bought my work, to my great pleasure as well as profit. Blanche wanted a new shuttle, and her mother, who was under extra expense just then, told her she could have it the next week. It was shortly before Christmas, and next morning at rehearsal, with all the company present, Blanche walked up to Mr. Ellsler and asked him if he had any money.

He looked bewildered, and answered somewhat doubtfully that he thought he had a little. "Well," said she, "I want you to give me a quarter, so I can get you a Christmas present."

There was a burst of laughter as Mr. Ellsler handed her the quarter, and after rehearsal this is what she did with it:

On Superior Street a clothing store was being sold out—a forced sale. There she bought a black shoe-string tie for five cents, as a gift for Mr. Ellsler, and elsewhere got for herself a tatting-shuttle and five pieces of chewing-gum, and chuckled over her caper, quite undisturbed by her mother's tears.

One thing only moved her, one thing only she loved, music! She had a charming voice, clear, pure, and cold as crystal, and she sang willingly, nay, even eagerly, whenever she had the opportunity. In after years she became a well-known singer in light opera.

CHAPTER EIGHTH

I Display my New Knowledge—I Return to Cleveland to Face my First Theatrical Vacation, and I Know the very Tragedy of Littleness.

During that first season I learned to stand alone, to take care of myself and my small belongings without admonition from anyone. One of my notions was that, since an immortal soul had to dwell in my body, it became my bounden duty to bestow upon it regular and painstaking care in honor of its tenant. The idea may seem extravagant, yet it served me well, since it did for me what a mother's watchful supervision does for other little girls when habits are being formed.

I had learned, too, most of the technical terms used in the profession. I knew all about footlights, wings, flies, borders, drops, braces, grooves, traps, etc. I understood the queer abbreviations. Knew that O.P. side was opposite the prompt side, where the prompter stood with his book of the play to give the word to any actor whose memory failed him and to ring the two bells for the close of the act—one of warning to the curtain-man up aloft to get ready, the other for him to lower the curtain. Knew that R.U.E. and L.U.E. were right or left upper entrance; C., centre of the stage; R.C., right of centre; CD., centre-door. That to go D.S. or U.S. was an intimation that you would do well to go down stage or up stage, while an X. to C. was a terse request for you to cross to the centre of the stage, and that a whole lot of other letters meant a whole lot of other directions that would only bore a reader.

I understood how many illusions were produced, and one of the proofs that I was meant to be an actress was to be found in my enjoyment of the mechanism of stage effects. I was always on hand when a storm had to be worked, and would grind away with a will at the crank that, turning a wheel against a tight band of silk, made the sound of a tremendously shrieking wind, which filled me with pride and personal satisfaction. And no one sitting in front of the house looking at a white-robed woman ascending to heaven, apparently floating upward through the blue clouds, enjoyed the spectacle more than I enjoyed looking at the ascent from the rear, where I could see the tiny iron support for her feet, the rod at her back with the belt holding her securely about the waist (just as though she were standing on a large hoe, with the handle at her back), and the men hoisting her through the air, with a painted, sometimes moving, sky behind her.

This reminds me that Mrs. Bradshaw had several times to go to heaven (dramatically speaking), and as her figure and weight made the hoe support useless in her case, she always went to heaven on the entire paint-frame or gallery, as it is called—a long platform the whole width of the stage that is raised and lowered at will by windlass, and on which the artists stand while painting scenery. This enormous affair would be cleaned and hung about with nice blue clouds, and then Mrs. Bradshaw, draped in long, white robes, with hands meekly crossed upon her ample breast and eyes piously uplifted, would rise heavenward, slowly, as so heavy an angel should. But, alas! there was one drawback to this otherwise perfect ascension. Never, so long as the theatre stood, could that windlass be made to work silently. The paint-gallery always moved up or down to a succession of screaks unoilable, untamable, blood-curdling, that were intensified by Mrs. Bradshaw's weight, so that she ascended to the blue tarlatan empyrean accompanied by such chugs and long-drawn yowlings as suggested a trip to the infernal regions. Mrs. Bradshaw's face remained calm and unmoved, but now and then an agonized moan escaped her, lest even the orchestra's effort to cover up the paint-frame's protesting cries should prove useless. Poor woman, when she had been lowered again to terra firma and stepped off, the whole paint-frame would give a kind of joyous upward spring. She noticed it, and one evening looked back, and said: "Oh, you're not a bit more glad than I am, you screaking wretch!"

I had learned to make up my face properly, to dress my hair in various ways, and was beginning to know something about correct costuming; but as the season was drawing to its close my heart quaked and I was sick with fear, for I was facing, for the first time, that terror, that affliction of the actor's life, the summer vacation.

People little dream what a period of misery that is to many stage folk. Seeing them well dressed, laughing and talking lightly with the acquaintances they meet on the street, one little suspects that the gnawing pain of hunger may be busy with their stomachs—that a woman's fainting "because of the extreme heat, you know," was really caused by want of food. That the fresh handkerchiefs are of their own washing. That the garments are guarded with almost inconceivable care, and are only worn on the street, some older articles answering in their lodgings—and that it is not vanity, but business, for a manager is not attracted by a seedy or a shabby-looking applicant for an engagement.

Oh, the weary, weary miles the poor souls walk! with not a penny in their pockets. They are compelled to say, "Roll on, sweet chariot!" to even the street-car as it appears before their longing eyes.

Some people, mostly men, under these circumstances will stand and look at the viands spread out temptingly in the restaurant windows; others, myself among the number, will avoid such places as one would avoid a pestilence.

We were back in Cleveland for the last of the season, and I used to count, over and over again, my tiny savings and set them in little piles. The wash, the board, and, dear heaven! there were six long, long weeks of vacation, and I had only one little pile of board money to set against the whole six. I had six little piles of wash money, and one other little pile, the raison d'être of which I may explain by and by, if I am not too much ashamed of the early folly.

Now I was staying at that acme of inconvenience and discomfort, a cheap boarding-house, where, by the way, social lines were drawn with sharp distinction, the upper class coldly recognizing the middle class, but ignoring the very existence of the lower class, refugees from ignoble fortune.

Mrs. Bradshaw, by right of dignity and regular payments for the best room in the house, was the star-boarder, and it was undoubtedly her friendship which raised me socially from that third and lowest class to which my small payments would have relegated me.

Standing in my tiny, closet-like room, by lifting myself to my toes, I could touch the ceiling. There was not space for a bureau, but the yellow wash-stand stood quite firmly, with the assistance of a brick, which made up for the absence of part of its off hind leg. There was a kitchen-chair that may have been of pine, but my aching back proclaimed it lignum-vitæ. A mere sliver of a bed stretched itself sullenly in the corner, where its slats, showing their outlines through the meagre bed-clothing, suggested the ribs of an attenuated cab-horse. From that bed early rising became a pleasure instead of a mere duty. Above the wash-stand, in a narrow, once veneered but now merely glue-covered frame, hung a small looking-glass, that, size considered, could, I believe, do more damage to the human countenance than could any other mirror in the world. It had a sort of dimple in its middle, which had the effect of scattering one's features into the four corners of the glass, loosely—a nose and eyebrow here, a mouth yonder, and one's "altogether" nowhere.

It was very disconcerting. Blanche said it made her quite sea-sick, or words to that effect. This dreadful little apartment lay snug against the roof. In the winter the snow sifted prettily but uncomfortably here and there. In the summer the heat was appalling. Those old-timers who knew the house well, called No. 15 the "torture-chamber," and many a time, during the fiercest heat, Mrs. Bradshaw would literally drive me from the small fiery furnace to her own room, where at least there was air to breathe, for No. 15 had but half a window. And yet, miserable as this place was, it was a refuge and a shelter. The house was well known, it was ugly, as cheap things are apt to be, but it was respectable and safe, and I trembled at the thought of losing my right to enter there.

In the past my mother had been employed by the landlady as seamstress and as housekeeper, besides which she had once nursed the lonely old woman through a severe sickness, and as I had been permitted to live with my mother, Mrs. Miller of course knew me well; so one day when she found me engaged in the unsatisfactory occupation of recounting my money she asked me, very gruffly, what I was going to do through the summer. I gazed at her with wide, frightened eyes, and was simply dumb. More sharply, she asked: "Do you hear?—what are you going to do when the theatre closes?"

I swallowed hard, and then faintly answered: "I've got one week's board saved, Mrs. Miller, but after that I—I—," had my soul depended upon the speaking of another word I could not have uttered it.

She glared her most savage glare at me. She impatiently pushed her false front awry, pulled at her spectacles, and finally took up one of my six little piles of coin and asked: "What's this for?"

"Washing," I gasped.

"You don't send your handkerchiefs to the wash, do you?" she demanded, suspiciously.

I shook my head and pointed to a handkerchief drying on a string at my half-window.

"That's right," she remarked, in a slightly mollified tone. Then she reached over, took up the pile that was meant for the next week's board, and putting it in her pocket, she remarked: "I'll just take this now, so you won't run no risk of losing it, and for the next five weeks after, why, well your mother was honest before you, and I reckon you're going to take after her. You promise to be a hard worker, too, so, well nobody else has ever been able to stay in this room over a week—so I guess you can go on stopping right here, till the theatre opens again, and you can pay me by fits and starts as it comes handy for you. Why, what's the matter with you? Well, I vum! you must be clean tuckered out to cry like that! Land sakes, child! tie a wet rag on your head and lay right down, till you can get picked up a bit!" and out she bounced.

Dear old raging savage! how she used to frighten us all! how she barked and barked, but she never, never bit! How I wanted to kiss her withered old cheek that day when she offered me shelter on trust! But she was eighty-five years old and my honored guest here at "The Pines" before I told her all the terror and the gratitude she brought to me that day.

My clear skin, bright eyes, and round face gave me an appearance of perfect health, which was belied by the pain I almost unceasingly endured. The very inadequate provision my poor mother had been able to make for the necessaries of her child's welfare, the cruel restrictions placed upon my exercise, even upon movement in that wooden chair, where I sat with numb limbs five hours at a stretch, had greatly aggravated a slight injury to my spine received in babyhood. And now I was facing a life of hard work, handicapped by that most tenacious, most cruel of torments, a spinal trouble.

At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back, spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words "fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented, crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of uncertain health may have caused the capricious appetite that tormented me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coarse food. Heavy meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by rice-pudding.

But the trouble from the fastidious appetite came when it suddenly demanded something for its gratification—imperiously, even furiously demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appetite of mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else. Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be piled on my table (I lived far from shell-oysters then), and when I awoke I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been saved for.

At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things, but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. Fifteen or twenty-five cents was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.

But, good gracious! what a sum of money—ten cents for a mere pleasure! though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long, blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pass in the "torture-chamber," but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I could live on memory, and the next upon anticipation, and so get through the long vacation in comparative comfort.

There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the lignum-vitæ chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.

The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel, buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked; but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction. The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights, to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill—and then my heart stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear God! a man's great red hand was grasping it—was clutching it, here and there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs—too late. The dress lay in the doorway—the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed eyes. The smell of a musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk; then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping craving for ice-cream.

It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my first theatrical vacation.

CHAPTER NINTH

The Season Reopens—I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility Man—Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work.

The exuberance of my joy over the opening of the new season was somewhat modified by my close relations with a certain pair of knee-breeches—and I wish to say right here that when Gail Hamilton declared inanimate things were endowed with powers of malice and general mischievousness, she was not exaggerating, but speaking strictly by the card.

Some men think her charge was made solely against collar-buttons, whose conduct the world admits is detrimental to good morals; but they are wrong; she included many things in her charge. Consider the innocent-looking rocking-chair, for instance. When it strikes does not the rocker always find your ankle-joint? In darkness or in light did it ever miss that exact spot? Never! And then how gently it will sway, while you rear and stamp, and, with briny eyes, say—well, things you should not say, things you would not say but for the malice of an inanimate thing.

Perhaps the quickest way to win your sympathy is to tell you at once that those knee-breeches were made of yellow plush, bright yellow—I thought that would move you! There was a coat, too—yes, things can always be worse, you see; and when I was crowded into that awful livery I felt like hopping about in a search for hemp-seed, I looked so like an enormous canary that had outgrown its cage.

Had Gail Hamilton known those breeches she would have said: "Here is total depravity in yellow plush!"

You see, the way they got their grip on me originally was this. There had been two utility men engaged for the company, but one of them was taken sick and could not come to the city at all, and the other one made the manager sick, and was discharged for utter incompetency, and that very night there was required a male servant who could in the first act summon the star to the presence of his employer, with a name hard to pronounce; and in the last act, when the star had become the boss of the whole affair, could announce the coming of his carriage.

"Could I do those two lines?"

"Oh, yes!" I joyfully announced my ability and my willingness; "but I had no clothes."

And then, instead of turning the part into a girl attendant, in an evil moment the manager bethought himself of some wardrobe he had purchased from a broken up or down opera manager, and search discovered the yellow-plush breeches, coat, and white wig. I put them on—the canary was hatched!

I played the part of two announcements; I walked out clear from the hip, like a boy—and I became the utility man of the company, and the tormented victim of the yellow breeches.

I was a patient young person and willing to endure much for art's sake, but that wig was too much. Built of white horse-hair mounted upon linen, its heat and weight were fearful. It had evidently been constructed for a big, round, perfectly bumpless head. It came down to my very eyebrows on top, and at the sides, instead of terminating just at the hair-line above the ear, it swallowed up my ears, covered my temples, and extended clear to my eyes, giving me the appearance of being harnessed up in large white blinders—like a shying horse. In common humanity the manager released me from the wig and let me wear powder, but the clutch of the yellow breeches remained unbroken.

As in their opera days (I don't know what they sang, but they were probably in the chorus) they had wandered through the world, knowing all continental Europe and the South Americas, so now they wandered through dramatic literature. One night accompanying me on to deliver a note to Madame de Pompadour, the next night those same yellow breeches and I skipped back to Louis XIV., and admitted many lords and ladies, with tongue-tying names, to that monarch's presence, only to skip forward again, in a few days, to bring in mail-bags to snuffy rural gentry, under almost any of the Georges. Though the lace ruffles and jabots of the French period might give place to a plain red waistcoat for the Georgian English household, the canary breeches were always there, ready to burst into song at any moment, to basely fire off a button or break a buckle just at the moment of my entrance-cue, treacherously suggesting, by their easy wrinkling while I stood, that I might just as well sit down and rest my tired feet, and the moment I attempted to lower myself to a chair, beginning such a mad cracking and snapping in every seam as brought me upright with a bound and the settled conviction that weariness was preferable to public shame.

I am glad to this day that the stage-door was always kept locked, for, had it been open, heaven only knows where those cosmopolitan breeches might have taken me—they were such experienced travellers that a trip to Havana or to the City of Mexico would have struck them as a nice little jaunt.

My pleasantest moments as utility man came to me when, in a very brief white cotton Roman shirt and sandals, I led the shouts for the supers, who are proverbially dumb creatures before the audience, though noisy enough behind the scenes. So all the furious and destructive mobs of that season were led on by a little whipper-snapper who yelled like a demon with a copper-lined throat and then stood about afterward peacefully making tatting.

It must not be thought that I had in the first place a monopoly of the small parts; far from it, but the company being rather short of utility people, if the ballet-girls could play speaking servants, it not only saved a salary or two to the manager, but it was of immense advantage to the girls themselves. Then, too, Mr. Ellsler was particularly anxious to avoid any charge of favoritism; so in the earliest days these little parts were given out turn and turn about, without choice or favor—indeed, two or three times my short dress caused me to be passed over in favor of long dresses and done-up hair. But a few disasters, caused by failure of memory or loss of nerve on the part of these competitors, gave the pas to me, and it must be remembered that these lapses and mishaps, though amusing to recall, were absolutely disastrous at the time, ruining, as they did, the scene, if not the entire act, in which they occurred.

With special vividness I recall the first one of these happenings. "Romeo and Juliet" was the play, and Balthazar the part. I longed for it because, aside from his fine speech, he was really quite important and had to show tenderness, anxiety, and determination during the time Romeo addressed him. I pleaded with my eyes, but I could not, dared not speak up and ask for the part, as did Annie, who was older than I. The star and prompter exchanged a few low-spoken sentences. I caught the condemnatory word "child," and knew my fate was sealed—long skirts and turned-up hair had won. However, my wound was salved when the page to Paris was given me with two lines to speak.

Now there is no one but Romeo on the stage when Balthazar enters, which, of course, gives him great prominence. His first speech, of some fifty or fifty-six words, is simply expressed, not at all involved, yet from the moment Annie received the part she became a broken, terror-stricken creature. Many people when nervous bite their nails, but Annie, in that state of mind, had a funny habit of putting her hand to the nape of her neck and rubbing her hair upward. She had a pretty dress of her own, but she had to borrow a wig, and, like all borrowed wigs, it failed to fit; it was too small, and at last, when the best had been done, its wobbly insecurity must have been terrifying.

The girl's figure was charming, and as she stood in the entrance in her boy's costume, I remarked: "You look lovely, Annie!"

Silently she turned her glassy, unseeing eyes toward me, while she shifted her weight swiftly from one foot to the other, opening and shutting her hands spasmodically. Romeo was on, and he joyously declared:

"My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne!"

He then described his happy dream—I heard the words:

"When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!"