You will learn how to walk, to stand still—a tremendous accomplishment. You will get acquainted with your own hands, and cease to worry about them.

You can train your brain by studying Shakespeare and the old comedies. Study not merely the leading part, but all the female parts; it is not only good training, but you never know when an opportunity may come to you. The element of "chance" enters very largely into the theatrical life. Above all, try to remember the lines of every female character in the play you are acting in; it might mean a sudden rise in your position if you could go on, at a moment's notice, and play the part of some one suddenly taken ill.

Then work, work, and above all observe.

Never fail to watch the acting of those about you. Get at the cause of the effects. Avoid the faults, and profit by the good points of the actors before you, but never permit yourself to imitate them.

One suggestion I would make is to keep your eyes open for signs of character in the real life about you. The most successful bit of business I had in "Camille" I copied from a woman I saw in a Broadway car. If a face impresses you, study it, try afterward to recall its expression. Note how different people express their anger: some are redly, noisily angry; some are white and cold in their rage. All these things will make precious material for you to draw upon some day, when you have a character to create; and you will not need to say, "Let me see, Miss So-and-So would stand like this, and speak very fast, or very slow," etc.

You will do independent work, good work, and will never be quite satisfied with it, but will eagerly try again, for great artists are so

constituted; and the hard life of disappointments, self-sacrifices, and many partings, where strong, sweet friendships are formed only to be broken by travelling orders, will all be forgotten when, the glamour of the footlights upon you, saturated with light, thrilling to music, intoxicated with applause, you find the audience is an instrument for you to play upon at will. And such a moment of conscious, almost divine power is the reward that comes to those who sacrifice many things that they may act.

So if you really are one of these, I can only say, "Act, act!" and Heaven have you in its holy keeping.

But, dear gifted woman, pause before you put your hand to the plough that will turn your future into such strange furrows; remember, the life of the theatre is a hard life, a homeless life; that it is a wandering up and down the earth; a life filled full with partings, with sweet, lost friendships; that its triumphs are brilliant but brief.

If you do truly love acting, simply and solely for the sake of acting, then all will be well with you, and you will be content; but verily you will be a marvel.

For the poor girl or woman who, because she has to earn her own living, longs to become an actress, my heart aches.

You will say good-by to mother's petting; you will live in your trunk. The time will come when that poor hotel trunk (so called to distinguish it from the trunk that goes to the theatre, when you are travelling or en route), with its dents and scars, will be the only friendly object to greet you in your desolate boarding-house, with its one wizened, unwilling gas-burner, and its outlook upon back yards and cats, or roofs and sparrows, its sullen, hard-featured bed, its despairing carpet; for you see, you will not have the money that might take you to the front of the house and four burners. Rain or shine, you will have to make your lonely, often frightened way to and from the theatre.

At rehearsals you will have to stand about, wearily waiting hours while others rehearse over and over again their more important scenes; yet you may not leave for a walk or a chat, for you do not know at what moment your scene may be called. You will not be made much of. You will receive a "Good morning" or "Good evening" from the company, probably nothing more. If you are travelling, you will literally live in your hat and cloak. You will breakfast in them many and many a time, you will dine in them regularly, that you may rise at once and go to the theatre or car. You will see no one, go nowhere.

If you are in earnest, you will simply endure the first year,—endure and study,—and all for what? That, after dressing in the corner farthest from the looking-glass, in a dismal room you would scarcely use for your housemaid's brooms and dusters at home, you may stand for a few moments in the background of some scene, and watch

the leading lady making the hit in the foreground. Will these few, well-dressed, well-lighted, music-thrilled moments repay you for the loss of home love, home comfort, home stardom?

To that bright, energetic girl, just home from school, overeducated, perhaps, with nothing to do, restless,—forgive me,—vain, who wants to go upon the stage, let me say: "Pause a moment, my dear, in your comfortable home, and think of the unemployed actresses who are suffering from actual want. Is there one among you, who, if you had the chance, would care to strike the bread from the hand of one of these? Ask God that the scales of unconscious selfishness may fall from your eyes. Look about you and see if there is not some duty, however small, the more irksome the better, that you may take from your mother's daily load, some service you can render for father, brother, sister, aunt; some daily household task, so small you may feel contemptuous of

it, yet some one must do it, and it may be a special thorn in that some one's side. So surely as you force yourself to do the small things nearest your hand, so surely will you be called upon for greater service."

And oh! my dears, my dears, a loving mother's declaration, "I don't know what I should do without my daughter," is sweeter and more precious than the careless applause of strangers. Try, then, to be patient; find some occupation, if it is nothing more than the weekly putting in order of bureau drawers for some unusually careless member of the family; and, having a good home, thank God and your parents, and stay in it.

And now, having added the insult of preaching at you to the injury of disappointing you, I suppose you will accuse me of rank hypocrisy; but you will be wrong, because with outstretched hands I stand and proclaim myself your well-wisher and your friend.

CHAPTER II

THE STAGE AND REAL LIFE

How often we hear people say, "Oh, that's only a play!" or "That could only happen in a play!" and yet it's surprising how often actors receive proof positive that their plays are reflecting happenings in real life.

When Mr. Daly had "L'Article 47" on, at the 5th Avenue Theatre, for instance, the key-note of the play was the insanity of the heroine. In the second, most important act, before her madness had been openly pro

claimed, it had to be indicated simply by manner, tone, and gesture; and the one action of drawing the knee up into her clasping arms, and then swaying the body mechanically from side to side, while muttering rapidly to herself, thrilled the audience with the conviction of her affliction more subtly than words could have done. One night, when that act was on, I had just begun to sway from side to side, when from the auditorium there arose one long, long, agonizing wail, and that wail was followed by the heavy falling of a woman's body from her chair into the centre aisle.

In an instant all was confusion, every one sprang to his feet; even the musicians, who were playing some creepy, incidental music, as was the fashion then, stopped and half rose from their places. It was a dreadful moment! Somehow I kept a desperate hold upon my strained and startled