Litchfield enquirer., 1875-03-25
THE AWAKENED SOUL.
BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

Little Georgie Wilson was an actress, Sho was brought up on the boards, and knew hardly any life but the life of the
 stage. The unnatural was nature to her; the real existence, outside the illusion of the theatre, she saw only as an illusion at least as something vague, shadowy, and far of. To make the paradox of her ex- istence still more striking, Georgie, being
 herself the most girlish and womanly of creatures, almost invariably played the part of g boy or youth in that mock life which was more her real life than the oth-
 CT. She played the parts of midshipmen, pages, pantomime princes, saucy boys, spoiled boys, Little Pickles, precocious young swells, and all that kind of thing. This was in England, some years ago, when the rage for nudity had not yet set in, and girls put on male costumes on the stage only for artistic and dramatic pur- poses-just because the exigencies of the piece required 1t; and there was no more discredit attaching to the practice than to Charlotte Cushman's Romeo or Helen Faucit's Rosalind. Therefore little Geor- gie Wilson tin the stage bills she used to be called Miss Georgiana Melville, or Bel vile, or some such fine name), although she hardly ever knew what it was to tread the boards in woman's attire, was yet as
 good girl as could easily be found in
 any sphere or any petticoat. Her father had been an actor of the heavy-tragedy
 school, who lived all his life waiting for
 an opportunity to become 6 great Mac beth. but-never made his way to anything better than Macduff and a couple of pounds a week. Even from Macduff he
 had been dropping down of late, and had not death interposed, he might perhaps have ended his career as First Murderer, the best O the cut-throats. Georgina now kept herself and her mother by means of her harmless, unrenowned perform ances. She was a sort of favorite in the
 theatre where she played; but this was the old-fashioned time when light farces and pantomimes and such frivolity only wound up, like dessert, the grand and substan- tial banquet of tragedy, and therefore Georgina's position in the eyes of the pub lie was but 8 modest and unpretending place. Criticism hardly took her into ac- count at all.
 Georgina was very happy. She and her
 mother lodged in pretty, pleasant little house on the south side of London. The house had tiny patch of garden in front, and another scrap behind, each about the size of a table-cloth; and there were not only roses in each garden, but there was 8 vine creeping up the wall, which positive ly bore grapes, real grapes, that were suc- culent and good to eat in the autumn, al- though the place was so near London that Georgie always walked to her rehearsals when the day was fine. She and her moth CT had very few friends-hardly any, in- deed, outside the bounds of the profes- sion. Georgie had curly black hair and
 bright eyes and bright teeth, and despite her constant consumption of the midnight oil exhaled by the foot-ights, she was a clear-complexioned, fresh. healthy, happy
 girl. 4
 Georgina and her mother always went to church on Sundays. They belonged to the Established Church of England-at least they always attended the services of that Church. It is not likely that Georg- ina ever troubled herself to think about the comparative theological merits of one denomination and the other. But there came to a Dissenting chapel not very far from where Mrs. Wilson lived young, impassioned, energetic, thrilling preacher, who created quite a stir there, and was, indeed, talked of all over London; and one day, when Mrs. Wilson was unwell and unable to go to church, young friend of Georgina's took her to the Dissenting house of worship to hear the new pulpit orator.
 Georgina did not think it likely she would much care About the preaching, or observe any great difference between one preacher and another. She had heard a
 sermon every Sunday for years-that is to say, she had sat in the church while a cut and-dred discourse, barren as a sand bank, hollow as drum, was being read
 out in tone of sing-song monotony. Therefore, Tn fact, she never listened, and
 if she had listened, would have been none
 the better. But she soon found, to her great surprise, that she was actually list ening to the Dissenting preacher; then that she could not choose but listen: that she had to hold her breath sometimes in
 the very intensity of her emotion; that tears, genuine human tears, were called
 into her eyes; that her cheeks burned and
 her heart throbbed; that the eloquence of
 the preacher swept her along as the rush of . mighty wind might have done. For she was under the spell of that rarest, grandest of magicians, great, true pull fpit oratOr.a adi gc sy 5 ot s3alCsca -.zr. T The Rev. Joseph Shelton, the preacher, was young man with glowing dark eyes,
 mobile face full of expression, a nlagnifi- cent voice, and c wondrous natural gift of graceful appropriate, and commanding
 gesture. He seemed terribly in earnest,
 but mere earnestness never yet made an
 orator; and this preacher had other and,
 in an artistic sense, far higher gifts. Whatever the subject of his discourse, Georgina must have listened; but this ser
 mon had painful, ,an appalling fascidation
 for her. It was denunciation of the stage.
 Piilessly, pathetically, passionately, the
 orator exposed the hollowness, the morbid ness, the temptations, the sins, the shame ful tendencies, of the stage. Above all,
 be condemned it as place for women. He
 drew a ghastly picture of the actress-his
 typical actress-as a disgrace to woman
 hood, lure and a curse to manhood. While he thus denounced the stage and
 actors, the preacher proved himself the
 most magnificent of actors in the high artistic sense. How dull and formal and
 wooden seemed to Georgina's aroused
 mind all the wigged and padded Richards
 and Strangers and Claude Melnottes to
 whose monotonous and mechanical decla-
 nation she had 20 long been accustomed! What terrible fascination there was in