The courier., 1899-01-14

*
one thinks Of the red blood that is vast
ed all over the world every day. Of the
health and strength and strength that
are squandered. one protests at the in.
justice OF it. All well, "Uther heights
in other lives. God willing" when have
been for little while with minds like
that, then ! know that somew here,
sometime there is resurrection and
life, that nothing can destroy or entirely
disintegrate u personality 30 unique, 80
dominating 80 pregnant with power.
What a strange figure she is among
our gay MUMMERs and masquers, that
pale, fragile little one with the thin ner.
vous lips, and eyes fixed always upon
the distance. And life has never been
easy for her. No player ever reserved a
harder novltiate. She began life on the
stage; chs has never known anything
else. Her cradle was one Of the theatre
trunks in her mothers dressing ROOM
and the trunk lid was propped up to
keep the light out OF her eyes. But that
was not for long, che loved that fierce
light eveG as baby, and could stare at
it without linking. She was not an
easy child to take care Of, and az she
was more contented at the theatre than
at the hotel, her mother always took her
along. The play ground she loved best
WAS that dusty green carpet behind the
footlights. The hard pltiless light of
the calcium was the sunlight of her
childhood, and in it she shot up az pale
and slender as cellar grown plant. and
this world grew to be very real to her;
the painted skies and seas and the can.
vas trees were to her what the real skies
and woods are to other children, and she
learned to think and dream and live
with them. So from the first the un.
real was reality to her, and the lie of
the imagination her only life. All her
most acute needs and desires and OK.
periences were those OF the imagination.
When she was but seven years old she
was already going with her fathers
company, a poor, bedraggled little com.
pany OF strOlling players, wandering
from town to town across the prairies OF
the blizzard swept west, performing on
tables lashed together in tavern dining
rooms, often stranded and without mon.
ey for days together. The child danced
the highland fling, brou gh: up tie rear
OF the Amazon march, played the Duke
OF York in "Rlchard Ill.," played in
Ten Nights in Bar Room ia short
went through the whole repertoire OF irk.
some duties attendant On the lower
walks OF the profession she leads today.
When she was ten che was doing the
child prodigy with Barry Sullivan IN
New Orleans. and cad time OF it the
poor fellow had with her. 1t took the
most persistent coaxing to make her
learn her lines, as she always insisted
that she could improvise something quite
as good, and held the text Of the play.
wright in utter contempt. Even in
Shakesperian plays she frequently i'm.
provised in blank verse to the astOnish
ment OF the audience and the utter con-
founding of her fellow players. One
night che was cast for the apparition
which bids Macbeth be 'lion-mettled,"
and the appearance Of this funny little
ghost in white night. gown sent the
audience into a convulsiOn OF laughter.
Then cau.e the long, hard, hopeless
hopeless year OF wandering about the
frontier, starving in cheap melo dramas,
living at cheap hotels, in the compan-
ionship of cheap people. She played
only soubrette parts and she did not
play them remarkably we'll. She was
poor. unknown, unnoticed, nnattractive.
"Tess OF the d'Ubervilles" had not been
written then, Ibsen had not been trans
lated into English. What noble faith,
what miracle Of hope supported her in
struggle which seemed sO hOpelessY
When she was fifteen she was married
to Legrand White, an xylophone soloist
she met somewhere in the west. 1t
seems that the Fates have q sense of
humor after all.
Her New York debut was no more
successful than her western starving
ventures. She appeared in a soubrette
part in a wretched play. Fogg's Ferry"
aud played it indifferently. Then che
m a p rriad HarriaOn Gray Eiaka aditnr ~