Stage Confidences | Page 7

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