 Chapter 26 of Autobiography of an Actress by Anna Cora Mollett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kelly Taylor. We left New Orleans about the middle of March, 1853, in the Queenly Magnolia. The young nephew, Stanislaus, whom I mentioned in the preceding chapter, was again my gallant escort. In four days we reached Memphis. Six years before, I had promised Henry Clay not to pass that city again without appearing there in my professional capacity. I never traveled on the southern portion of the Mississippi River since the spring when we spent those pleasant days on board the Alexander Scott. We arrived in Memphis on Sunday morning. The next evening I made my debut in Parthenia. I had been ill during my whole stay in New Orleans and was now making a desperate struggle within disposition. I found the audience particularly inspiring. The engagement promised to be brilliant in the extreme. As the curtain fell upon each act of Ingomar, I found it more and more difficult to proceed, but I knew from experience that a strongly concentrated will could master the infirmities of an exhausted physique. I invoked to my aid all the mental energy that could obey the summons and ended the play successfully. The next night I was announced to appear as Mrs. Holler. If I had been governed by common prudence, I had almost written common sense. I should not have attempted the performance, but long habit and the example of others had accustomed me to make light of physical ailments when they interfered with my professional duty. I had seen many an actor walk majestically upon the stage and play a part with thrilling effect who, the instant he was out the range of the footlights, sank down, unable to speak or to stand from the excess of acute suffering. I have often seen actors fall into long fits of swooning and, on recovering, be forced to return to the stage and continue their embodiments. I remember one occasion in England when an actor who was personating my father drew down the displeasure of an audience by his feeble and uncertain delivery of the text. How little they suspected that he was dying at that very moment. Three days afterwards, he departed this life. Mrs. Glover's Last Night in London is an instance of indomitable energy that characterizes the votary of the stage in this conflict with external circumstances. She rose from an illness which her physician had pronounced fatal to enact Mrs. Malaprop in the comedy of the Rivals on the occasion of her farewell of the stage. The instant the performance was over, her temporary strength evaporated. She was incapable of answering the summons of the audience, of crossing the stage before the footlights and courtesying to her acknowledgments. At their clamorous demand to behold her once more, she was placed in an armchair in the center of the stage, surrounded and supported by a galaxy of distinguished performers who had congregated in honor of her farewell. The curtain rose, she feebly bowed her thanks, heard you, smiled upon the bouquets that fell in a floral deluge around her. The curtain descended upon her last triumph. She was taken home and in two days breathed her last. A host of similar instances might be given to illustrate how difficult it is for an actor to admit the possibility of his physical condition interfering with the discharge of his public duty. It was an impression of this kind, deeply stamped upon my mind, that lured me to commit the indiscretion of endeavoring to perform on my second night in Memphis. Mrs. Holler has but few words to speak in the first act, and those I manage to utter, and those with difficulty. For a fresh attack of bronchitis was added to insipid malaria. In the second act, I scarcely entered upon the stage before I began to be aware that I had miscalculated my powers. The third time I attempted to speak, I found my voice had entirely departed. Again and again, I tried to force out a sound, but my lips opened and closed again noiselessly. Dr. S., who afterwards attended me, used to say that he never witnessed an exhibition at once so comical and so painful. The lips moving without producing the faintest articulation, the look of consternation quickly followed by an expression of resolution not to be vanquished, the impotent battle with the inevitable. But I was conquered. I could not speak, and I could not have maintained an erect position much longer. The considerate manager, Mr. Charles, who occupied the stage with me, instantly apologized to the audience and the curtain fell. For nine days I remained dangerously ill. Dr. S. advised that I should be removed the instant that I could bear the journey. He gave it as his medical opinion that, although it was hardly possible for me to rally in that atmosphere, I would recover rapidly once I reached the other side of the mountains. We left Memphis on the twelfth day of our sojourn there, and, traveling slowly, arrived at my sister's residence in Philadelphia in ten days more. As Dr. S. predicted, I began to revive as soon as we passed the mountains and was soon convalescent. At this period Mrs. Warner was about to leave America, where she had encountered a series of most heartbreaking trials. The autumn previous I had promised her my services for a benefit, at any time when she chose to call upon me. I thus hoped to make amends, in a slight degree, for the losses and the discomfortures which had waylaid her whole path in a foreign land. She was now just recovering from a dangerous illness, or rather was supposed to be recovering. Late tidings bring the sad intelligence of her lapse, which is feared to prove fatal. She was to receive a complimentary benefit at the Howard Athenium and requested the fulfillment of my promise. I consented to act Desdemona to her Amelia, and went to Boston for that purpose about the middle of May. On the morning of the benefit Mrs. Warner was still unable to leave her apartment, the benefit, however, took place, and thronged attendance proved the high estimation in which she was held by an American public. Mrs. M. Jones filled the role of Amelia in Mrs. Warner's stead. I represented Desdemona, Mr. Marshall Othello. I once more used my voice with great facility, but the exertion consequent even upon so unarduous performance made me conscious of unusual deficiency of strength and elasticity. I had arranged to make an extensive western tour during this summer, which was to be my last upon the stage, but l'un promise du dispose. I had never recovered entirely from my attack in Memphis. Early in June I was again taken seriously ill. After six weeks of suffering, which surpassed in severity all my previous experiences of what mortality can endure, my father insisted that I should be brought to his residence at Ravenswood and placed under the care of the celebrated Dr. M. Whose eminence, as both surgeon and physician, has been recognized in both hemispheres, and has even rendered him famous on olden classic ground. I had lost all power of locomotion and was thoroughly helpless, but had made not a few journeys before on temporary beds, placed in railway cars and in carriages, and was now forced to this sad necessity again. I must say that I greatly preferred my seat of hay in the corner of the old ox cart, dolted us over the frozen wiles of Indiana. My faithful sister May, at whose house in Boston I had been residing, accompanied me. We reached our father's dwelling in safety, and I was born to the sunny white curtain chamber, where I am now reclining. Month after month has glided away. The flower-sinted summer has buried her perfumes and flown. The crimson-fingered autumn has trampled her tinted foliage underfoot and departed. Winter is beginning to show his hard-featured and frost-bitten face, and finds this little chamber still my compulsory abiding place. There have been no flower gatherings, no garden ramblings for me since June. Day after day I have looked out with longing eyes upon the gardens beneath my window, and watched the flowers, then enameled the fair earth, one by one, pale on their stems, wither and disappear. The last dolly has just dropped its head and died. There are a cluster of pine trees that look in at one of my windows, and I have found daily delight, I may say, actual comfort in gazing at their emerald beauty. I know every branch, every little twig, almost every little bird, which, through the summer, has sat in the bowels and made vocal air with his mattin' songs. The wind plays through those pine tree branches, as on an instrument, with a muffled musical sound, like that of the human voice, called by singer's availed voice. I have never heard wind sighing through any other trees produce the same hushed, murmuring melody. And what gloriously golden sunsets I have beheld through those pine tree branches, as I lay looking out at the sky. What soft moonlit shinings, what brilliant starlight gleamings. One of my chief amusements is watching the setting sun, that at each departure assumes some farewell robe of varied splendid. And sometimes I amuse upon life's early dawn that broke, flooding the horizon with radiance, upon the storms that gathered before morning has passed, upon clouds that parted at noonday, to let through and unlook forward effusions, as I dreamily gaze at the sun, going down with mellow glory, I think of a sunset of peace that may be given for such a life's closing. I lift my eyes, and they fall upon the pine trees again. But now the rich green of their plumy foliage is taking a rusty hue for winter, as he strides on with ice-shod feet, has breathed upon them coldly. The clustering cones that brownly spangled the boughs have ripened, and the wind is shaking them to the ground, like hopes that fall to plant the seeds of new hopes. I shall see the snow enshroud the pine tree branches and still be a prisoner. Yet, even in a sick chamber, the slow movement of life may be calm and glad. Patience may pour upon the spirit her medicinal balm. Hope may sit enthroned in the heart, shining with steadfast luster. Memory unfolding her tablets may point to some bright and consoling records. The voices of tenderness may fall in music on the pain-quickened ear. The holy ties of kinship, the adamantine chains of friendship may be drawn closer than ever. Let my future be cast where it may, I must, perforce, look back with loving remembrance upon the pleasant little chamber beneath my father's roof, where, if I have suffered much, I have rejoiced more. The ten sisters have never again been gathered in the paternal home, but each one not separated by the ocean has come, in turn, to shed her sweet influence around the couch of the invalid, some to spend but days, some weeks and some months. And the tender second mother has flitted in and out each day, drawing the sunshine after her and performing thoughtful offices of love. And the younger sisters, whose home I now share, have gladdened the room with their blooming presents, their praddling tongues, and the fateful attendant who has journeyed with me by land and by sea, has proved as devoted and as patient by the couch of sickness, as she was cheerful and intrepid in our far-off wanderings. And last, though ever first, shall I not reverently speak of your precious visits to our cheerful chamber, my father? Shall I say no word of you who, through the varied vicitudes of my life, sustained and encouraged me in all my strenuous exertions, you who consoled me under all my hard trials, you whose own unconquerable energy has taught me how to battle with life's ills, whose example of smiling fortitude has shown me how to be victorious over inflexible circumstance, whose recognition of divine providence, even in things most minute, has strengthened my faith, whose daily acts have given to your precepts double weight, you who forgot the shortcomings of my wayward girlhood and opened your arms, your heart to me, without breathing one reproach? May I not record those things of you and say that to you I owe the possession of some of those qualities which have rendered your own struggles in life blessed, which have made manifest the softening uses of sorrow? Surely this is a tribute which a child may pay to a father, even in the world's full hearing. I do not attempt to restrain the outgushing of my spirit when I speak to you. My memoirs would neither be truthful nor complete if they contained no chronicle such as I have written above. Two-thirds of those memoirs have been penned in this quiet little chamber I have described, penned during intervals from suffering and a period of slow convalescence. When I fully recover my health, as the distinguished physician mentioned above, who has expended his skill upon me for nearly five months is confident that I shall do, I purpose taking a brief farewell of my profession in some of the principal cities of the union. I desire to leave that profession as calmly and as deliberately as it was entered, for I shall bid it adieu with those objects, imperiously summoned by which I first bore the name of actress, happily accomplished. I will here answer a question in relation to the stage which I am frequently asked. There are some who may be profited by the reply. Are you fond of the stage? has been the inquiry put by many lips during the past eight years. There is a species of aristocratic affectation existing amongst the members of the profession which induces many of them to declare that they detest their own vocation, that they dislike nothing so much as acting, etc. I have heard this assertion again and again from the mouths of the most successful performers, and all affectation seems to me so inconsistent with true talent that I could not but listen in wonder. But, as I have said, to declare that the stage is distasteful is looked upon as a sign of professional aristocracy. By on part, I answer frankly, I have received intense delight from the personation of some characters. The power of swaying the emotion of the crowd is one of the most thrilling sensation that I have ever experienced. Yet I have not found in the profession the kind of absorbing fascination which I have often heard described as inseparable from the stage. There are too many incongruous elements mingled with every dramatic triumph for the charm, if any, to be complete. Without looking upon the theatre as a cesarean bower, without entertaining a passion for the stage, I have a quiet love for the drama, which, heaven forbid, with my convictions in regard to its use, I should ever shrink from acknowledging. Without some decided attachment for the profession, I cannot conceive how the fatigues, the vexation, the disappointment's incident, even upon the most successful theatrical career, could be supported. Let me hear Venture to warn any enthusiastic young aspirant against adopting the stage, unless her qualifications, not to use a much abused word, say her mission, seem particularly to fit her for such a vocation, unless she be strongly impelled by the possession of talents which are unquestionable, unless she be enamored of art itself. But that the dangers of the profession are such that they are generally accredited to be, I do not believe. For I have known too many women bred upon the stage whose lives were so blamelessly exemplary, whose matters so refined, whose intellect so cultivated that they would adorn any sphere of society. The subject is not one into which I can fully enter, but let me say that the woman who could be dazzled by the adulation bestowed upon her talents as an actress would be dazzled and led astray in the blaze of a ballroom, in the excitement of social intercourse in any situation where those talents could be displayed, in any position where she could hear the false goslings of a flattering tongue, and from these where will she be shielded, except in utter seclusion. But to return to the subject from which I wandered, unless the actress in anticipation is willing to encounter disappointment in myriad unlooked foreshaves, to study incessantly and find that her closet study is insufficient, to endure an amount and kind of fatigue which she never dreamed of before, if she feel the grasshopper a burden and the crumpled rose leaf and inconvenience to her slumber, I would bid her shun the stage. But if she be prepared to meet petty as well as formidable trials, the former are more often difficult to bear than the latter. If she be sustained by some high purpose, some strong incentive, if she act in obedience to the dictates of the strong lawgiver duty, then let her enter the profession boldly. By gracing help to elevate the stage, and add hers to the purifying influences which may dwell within the walls of the theatre as securely as in any other temple of art. Let her bear in mind that the sometimes degraded name of actress can be dignified in her own person. Let her feel, above all things, that the actress must excite reverence as well as admiration. The crowd must honor as well as worship. They can always be made to do the latter at the feet of genius. They can only be compelled to do the former when genius sheds its halo around higher attributes. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of Autobiography of an Actress by Anna Coral-Mullet This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kelly Taylor I have been for eight years an actress. In the exercise of my vocation I have visited many theatres throughout this land and in Great Britain. This fact perhaps gives me some right to speak upon the stage as an institution, upon its uses and abuses, for I speak in all humility, albeit said, from actual knowledge and personal experience. My testimony has at least the value of being disinterested, for I was not bred to the stage. I enter upon it from the bosom of private life. None who are linked to me by affinity of blood ever belong to the profession. I am about to leave it of my own choice, and I bid it farewell in the midst of a career which, if it has reached its meridian, has not, as yet, taken the first downward inclination. I can have no object in defending the drama apart from the impulse to utter what I believe to be the truth, and an innate love and reverence for dramatic art. The stage is not an insignificant pastime. History teaches us that it is an institution which has existed almost from time immemorial, protected by the laws, consecrated by the dramatic teachings of the divine and sages, and accepted as a mode of instruction, as well as diversion in almost all lands. It is a school most important in its operations, most potent in its admonitions, most profusely productive of good or evil influences. The actor sways the multitude, even as the preacher and the orator, often more powerfully than either. He arouses their slumbering energies, elevates their minds, calls forth their loftiest aspirations, excites their purest emotions, or, if he be faults to his trust, a perverted instrument, he may minister to viviated taste, and help to corrupt, to enervate, to debase. It is impossible, says a writer in Edinburgh Review, for a person unacquainted with dramatic representations to understand the effect produced on a mixed mass of people when a striking sentiment is uttered by a popular actor. The conviction is instantaneous. Hundreds of stormy voices are awakened. The spirit of every individual is in arms, and a thousand faces are lighted up, which a moment before seemed calm and powerless, and their impression is not so transient as might be thought. It is carried home and nursed till it ripens. It is a germ which blossoms out into patriotism or runs up rank into prejudice or passion. It is intellectual property honestly acquired. Men are often amused and sometimes instructed by books, but a tragedy is a great moral lesson, read to two senses at once, and the eye and the ear are both held in alliance to retain the impression which the actor has produced. Lord Bacon tells us, the drama is as history brought before the eyes. It presents the images of things as if they are present, while history treats of them as things past. Sir Joshua Reynolds says, every establishment that tins to the cultivation of the pleasures of the mind as distinct from those of the sense may be considered as inferior schools of morality, where the mind is polished and prepared for higher attainments. Disraeli, the elder, declares that the stage is a supplement to the pulpit, where virtue, according to Plato's sublime idea, moves our love and affection when made visible to the eye. It was in the age of the wise Solon, something more than 2,400 years ago, that the rude dramatic attempts of Thespus awoke the admiration of the Athenians. The performances he instituted were a species of monologue, relieved by Chorus. Upon this imperfect foundation, the Nomal Escalus built the classic drama and gained the name of the father of tragic song. Since that period in those countries where civilization has made the most rapid progress, where the social tone has been the most elevated, her taste and refinement have superseded mere sensuality, the drama has held her most prosperous sway. Dramatic art was at its zenith in Rome during the Augustan age, in Greece, when Escalus, Sophoclese, and Euripides taught in her dramatic temples, in France during the so-called Golden Reign of Louis XIV, when Cornell and Racine wrote, not merely moral, but absolutely religious plays, and even Voltaire impressed Piety into his tragedies, that his other works are pervaded with an opposite spirit does not alter this fact. Dr. Isaac Watts, the distinguished divine, says, what a noble use have Racine and Cornell made of Christian subjects in some of their best tragedies. In England the drama, though often lamentably misused and degraded, shed glory upon the reins of Elizabeth and Anne, and has held an increasing honor at the present epoch, the most peaceful and prosperous with which that kingdom has ever been blessed. Let us go back further, even to the period of the First Christian Era, and learn whether the outcry against theaters is justified by the records of antiquity. There were theaters in Jerusalem when our Savior came upon the earth, yet by no sign does he point them out as fatally pernicious, by no word, no implication even does he denounce them. There were theaters at Damascus, at Ephesus, at Antioch, at Corinth, at Athens, at Thessalonica, at Philippi, at Alexandra, at Rome. The apostles preached the gospel in those cities, and reproved many vices, yet no syllable of rebuke do they designate the theater as immoral. It is likely if an institution, which was to perpetuate itself down to the present day, were essentially demoralizing, it would have escaped the breadth of their holy denunciation. St. Paul is called the most learned of the apostles, and in his teaching he quotes from three Greek dramatic poets, from Erastus of Sicilia, from Epaniades of Crete, from Menander, the Athenian, thus giving his own countenance to the theater by his familiar use of dramatic poetry. In the sacred scripture, there is not a single passage which, by any fair interference, can be distorted into a condemnation of theatrical entertainments, and yet how many sincere and truth-loving Christians believe it their duty to raise a hue and cry against the stage. A distinguished clergyman of our own land lately remarked from the pulpit that he feared there were many persons even among denouncers of the drama who were beneath a taste for the stage rather than above it, conveying the idea that the cultivation of those intellectual taste and moral sympathies which find their gratification in dramatic performances was a step in moral advancement, which many unsympathizing decryers of the stage would not or could not take. The parables are truth enveloped in fiction. The drama merely represents in actions what the parable and similar fictions inculcate by written or oral teaching. The play is but the dramatized form of the poem, the novel, history, or the parable, and the mind is more vividly impressed by what it sees enacted than by what it hears related. Take, for instance, the parable of the prodigal son. There can be no one so obtuse as to not admit the force and beauty of the illustration intended to be conveyed in it. Suppose that some dramatist to enforce the lesson of paternal forgiveness upon the minds which can be more deeply penetrated by visible symbols than by lecture throws the parable into dramatic form bringing out in appropriate language the whole moral of the story and has it represented in a theater. Does the mere translation of the parable into represented action render it pernicious? In this illustration we have the whole principle of the drama. A few seasons ago this very parable was produced as a spectacle at Drury Lane under the name of Aziel. It met with a very decided success. I am not certain, but my impression is that it was translated from the French. Dr. Isaac Watts, the author of Divine Hymns, thus alludes to the fitness of scriptural subjects for dramatic exposition. If the trifling and incredible tales that furnish out a tragedy are so armed by art and fancy as to become sovereign of the rational powers to triumph over the affections and manage our smiles and our tears at pleasure, how wondrous a conquest might be obtained over a wide world and reduce it at least to sobriety if the same happy talent were employed in dressing scenes of religion in their proper figures of majesty, sweetness, and terror. The affairs of this life, with reference to a life to come, would shine brightly in a dramatic description. This is high authority in favor of the drama. As a strong aid to my own imperfectly expressed arguments in Ditt's defense, I call a few opinions from sources which command reverence out of the multitude that might be given did space allow. The authorities, I shall cite, are such as should make any man pause before he ventures unconditionally to denounce the stage. Marcus Aurelius, an emperor distinguished for his piety says, tragedies were first brought in and instituted to put men in mind of worldly chances and causalities. After the tragedy, the Comedia Ventus, or ancient comedy, was brought in, which had the liberty to invade against personal vices, being therefore, through this, her freedom and liberty of speech of very good use and effect to restrain men from pride and arrogance to which end it was that diogenes took also the same liberty. Martin Luther, on the subject of the stage, says, in ancient times the dramatic art has been honored by being made subservient to religion and morality, and in it, the most enlightened country of antiquity in Greece, the theater was supported by the state. The dramatic nature of the dialogues of Plato has always been justly celebrated, and from this we may conceive the great charm of dramatic poetry. Action is the true enjoyment of life, nay, life itself. The great bulk of mankind are either from their situation or their incapacity for uncommon efforts, confined within a narrow circle of operation. Of all amusements, therefore, the theater is the most profitable, for there we see important actions when we cannot act importantly ourselves. It affords us a renovative picture of life, a compendium of whatever is animated and interesting in human existence. The susceptible youth opens his heart to every elevated feeling. The philosopher finds a subject for the deepest reflections on nature and constitution of man. In another work, Martin Luther says, and indeed Christians ought not altogether to fly and abstain from comedies, because now and then gross tricks and dallying passages are acted therein, for then it will follow that, by reason thereof, we should also abstain from reading the Bible. Therefore it is of no value that some allege such and the like things, and for these causes would forbid Christians to read or act comedies. The Reverend Dr. Knox in his essays says, There seems to me to be no method more effectual of softening the ferocity and improving the minds of the lower classes of the great capital than the frequent exhibitions of tragical pieces in which the distress is carried to the highest extreme and the moral is at once self-evident, affecting and instructive. The multitudes of those who cannot read or if they could have neither time nor abilities for deriving much advantage from reading are powerfully impressed through the medium of the eyes and ears, with those important truths which, while they illuminate the understanding, correct and modify the heart. Benevolence, justice, heroism, and the wisdom of moderating the passions are plainly pointed out and forcibly recommended to those savage sons of uncultivated nature who have few opportunities and would have no inclination for instruction if it did not present itself in the form of delightful amusement. Philip Malachthon says, On frequent reflection concerning the manners and discipline of mankind, I greatly admire the wisdom of the Greeks who at the commencement exhibited tragedies to the people by no means for the purpose of mere amusement, as is commonly thought, but much more on this account, that by the consideration of heinous examples and misfortunes they might turn their rude and fierce spirits to moderation and the bridling of undue desires. These things, therefore, were acted, beheld, read, and listened to, both by the philosophers and the people, not as mere romances, but as instructions for the government of life. Men were thus warned of the causes of human calamities, which in those examples they saw brought on an increase by depraved desires. Lord Bacon says, Dramatic poesy, which has the theater for its world, is of excellent use, if soundly administered. The stage can do much, either for corruption or discipline. Dr. Blair, one of the most eminent of divines says, Dramatic poetry has, among civilized nations, been always considered a rational and useful entertainment and judged worthy of careful and serious discussion. As tragedy is a high and distinguishing species of composition, so also, in its general strain and spirit, it is a favorable to virtue, and, therefore, though dramatic writers may, sometimes like other writers, be guilty of improprieties, though they may fail in placing virtue forcibly in due point of light, yet no reasonable person can deny tragedy to be a reasonable species of composition. Taking tragedies complexly, I am fully persuaded that the impressions left by them upon the mind are, on the whole, favorable to virtue and good dispositions, and, therefore, the zeal which some pious men have shown against the entertainment of the theater must rest only on the abuse of comedy, which indeed has frequently been so great as to justify very severe censures against it. I am happy, however, to have it in my power to observe that, of late years, a sensible reformation has begun to take place in English comedy. Sir Philip Sidney says, Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which the poet represented in the most ludicrous sort, that may be, so it is possible, that any beholder can be content to be such a one. And little reason have any men to say that men learn the evil by seeing it so set out. Since there is no man living, but by the force truth has in his nature, no sir nurse seeeth these men play their parts, but wisheth them in pastrinum, so that the right use of comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed, and much less the high and excellent tragedy that openeth the greatest wounds and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue, that makeeth kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humors, that, with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of the world, and upon how weak foundations gilded roofs are buildeth. Dr. Gregory, in his legacy to his daughter, says, I know no entertainment that gives much pleasure to any person of sentiment or humor as the theater. Sir Walter Scott says, the supreme being who claimed the seventh day has his own, allowed the other six days of the week for the purposes merely human. When the necessity for daily labor is removed, and the call of social duty fulfilled, that of moderate and timely amusements claims its place, as a want inherent in our nature. To relieve this want and fill up the mental vacancy, games are devised, books are written, music is composed, spectacles and plays are invented and exhibited. And if these last have a moral and virtuous tendencies, if the sentiments expressed tend to rouse our love of what is noble, and our contempt of what is mean, if they unite hundreds in a sympathetic admiration of virtue, of whore and suvice, or the origin of folly, it will remain to be shown how far the spectator is more criminally engaged than if he had passed the evening in the idle gossip of society, in the feverish pursuits of ambition or in the unsated and insatiable struggle after gain, the grave employments of the present life, but equally unconnected with our existence hereafter. Were it not presumption I should be inclined to differ with the assertion of the last line, for can the manner in which we employ a single moment here be unconnected with our existence hereafter? I think not. The testimony of such minds and such men in favor of the stage are at least worthy of attentive consideration, and, be it observed, they address themselves to the most conscientious Christians as more or more than to the man who makes no particular profession of religious faith. The stage, in almost all lands, and for a long series of years, has been protected and encouraged by governments. Would this have been the case if legislators had not found it conducive to the general well-being of all communities, and even a medium of political as well as of social and moral utility? Kalkraft, in his able and scholarly defense of the stage, mentions the act of parliament from which the patent of the present theatre royal in Dublin, mentioned in an earlier chapter of these memoirs, is derived as containing these words in the preamble, whereas the establishing a well-regulated theatre in the city of Dublin being the residence of the chief governor or governors of Ireland will be productive of advantage and tend to improve the morals of the people, etc. And the patent itself contains the royal intention and the expectations distinctly expressed in these words, that the theatre in future may be instrumental to the cause of virtue and instruction to human life. After which follow various restrictions, forbidding any performances, tending to profaneness, disloyalty, or indecency. If then, the stage be an institution acknowledged by the protection of governments as much as any which of passion for literature or art or science among men has established, is there not more wisdom in helping to elevate and guide its operations than in denouncing and transducing the institution itself. Art is either right or it is wrong. The sanctioning of voices of the ages have pronounced it to be right. One branch of art includes the drama. Shall this branch be lopped off because the canker worm of evil has entered some of its fruit, like sculpture, like painting, like music, like history, like the poem, the novel, like everything that ministers to faculties which distinguish us from brute creation. The drama is either an instrument of good or evil as it is rendered the one or the other by the use or abuse. This is the various truism. The theater, like the press, is one of the most powerful organs for the diffusion of salutary or pernicious influences. Vicious books are often printed. But shall we therefore extribute the press? Plays of questionable morality are sometimes enacted. But is that a cause for abolishing the stage? Sacrificing for a temporary abuse the great and permanent use? False doctrines and what are called heresies have been preached from many a pulpit and have led to the most fearful consequences. But shall the church therefore be column-nated? At the bar the most flagrant wrongs have grown out of the perversion of legal exposition. But shall law therefore be banished from the land? Corrupt judges have given unjust sentences. Shall the bench therefore be denounced? Physicians have destroyed instead of preserving life. Shall the science of medicine therefore be set a sign? Forgeries have been committed. Shall penmanship therefore wholly be forbidden? And yet if in one case abuse counteract use, why not in all? A royal governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, said, I thank God that there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience and heresies and sex into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libel against the best governments God keep us from both. This assertion is literally true, but the royal governor looked on the side of the question. The invaders against the theaters do precisely the same. Because there are abuses, most unquestionably separable from the use, is that a wise or just argument for the holy indignation often expressed against the theater and its upholder, about as wise and just as Sir William Berkeley's objections to the diffusion of knowledge. Reform the errors of the stage if you would serve the cause of human progress. No manager will produce plays that do not draw. It lies then with audiences to pronounce what representations shall receive their suffrages. The drama's laws, the drama's patrons make. But there lately have been a marked improvement in the class of plays offered to the public. The manager would be a bold one who, at the Howard Athenium, in Boston or at Neblos in New York, would produce a play of decided immoral tendency. His theater would soon be closed, even without any loud denunciations from outraged supporters. The community would forsake the establishment and leave the beggardly account of empty boxes to proclaim their disapproval. Numerous other theaters in this country, as in England, are becoming more and more cautious in their choice of plays to be enacted within their walls. In England the voice of the licensor is a check upon the representation of immoral dramas. In this country the voice of the people is a far more powerful organ than that of any royal licensor in exerting a similar control. Passages, even in Shakespeare, were listened to by audiences a few years ago without manifestations of displeasure, are now entirely omitted by actors and, if spoken, would inevitably be hissed. I do not mean to assert that there are not passages left which ought to be expunged, but I believe that, in time, they will not be tolerated. And I know that is the fault not of the actor but of the audience, if their ears are ever offended. The actor is supposed to speak only what is set down for him, and, according to strict regulations of some theaters, he would be heavily fined if he deviated upon his own responsibility from the text. There are plays in abundance which the most pious parent make take his children to witness with profit. Men who have won the highest distinctions, not through their genius only, but for the piety impurity of their lives, have devoted their talents to writing for the stage. More than 200 English clergymen have been dramatic authors. The Archbishop Gregory Nazyazin wrote sacred dramas from the histories of the Old and New Testament which were enacted upon the stage at Constantinople. From the stage, pagan plays were consequently banished. Apollonaris, Bishop of La de Silla, wrote scriptural tragedies and comedies. In ancient times, mysteries and moralities were not only written but acted by the clergy. Sir Thomas Moore, the renowned statesman, both wrote and acted interludes as they were called. Milton wrote the tragic poem of Samson Agonasties and the mask of Arcades and Comus. The latter still keeps on the stage. In the preface to his Samson Agonasties, he writes, Tragedy, as it is anciently composed, hath ever been held the greatest, moralist, and most profitable of all the poems. Hitherto, men in the highest dignity have labored not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Dr. Edward Young, the author of Night Thoughts, wrote the tragedies of the Revenge, Berserys, and the Brothers. The latter was enacted for the express purpose of adding the proceeds to the fund for the propagation of the gospel in foreign lands. The eloquent Reverend C. Maturin is the author of Bertram, a favorite character of many distinguished tragedians, also of Manuel, Fradolfo, and Osman the Renegade. The Reverend H. Millman, author of History of Christianity, wrote Fazio, in which the genius of Miss O'Neill shone preeminent. He also wrote Belshazzar's Feast, The Fall of Jerusalem, and The Marder of Antioch. The Reverend Dr. Crowley wrote Catiline, a comedy which has been represented with great success, entitled Pride Shall Have a Fall. The Pius Addison wrote The Tragedy of Cato, The Comedy of the Drummer, and The Opera of Rosamund. Dr. Johnson wrote The Tragedy of Irene. Coleridge wrote Two Tragedies, Remorse and Zopolja, and translated Schiller's Warnstein. Thompson, Goldsmith, Ms. Hannah Moore, Ms. Joanna Bailey, and Ms. Mitford have all contributed to the drama. To these, did space permit, I might add the names of many other authors, as noted for their religious attributes as their great gifts. The soundest philosophers have declared that intellectual recreation was needful to the well-being and mental health of men, and they have pronounced the stage to be one of the highest sources of such recreation. That rational amusement is a necessity of man's nature, imperatively demanded. Pindar and Aristotle have given their testimony. The former says, rest and enjoyment are universal physicians. The latter, that it is impossible for men to live in continual labor. Reposing games must succeed to cares and watching. The night amusement with instruction is to give relish to nourishment. The man whose energies are worn out with daily struggles and life, when he sees portrayed the sterner battle of some other life on the mimic world called the stage, forgets the cares that press too heavily on his own heart and paralyze its strength. He passes out of the narrow circle in which his selfhood is hourly bound. His faculties are quickened and refreshed by listening to sparkling wit. The finest cores within his bosom are stirred by the breath of the poet's inspirations. Emotions, devotional, heroic, patriotic, or soothingly domestic sweep over his prostrate spirit and lift it up from the contact with the dust of realities. He returns to his labor's invigorated, strengthened, or elevated by the relaxation. In our working day community, it is so such men that the theatre performs one of its chief usage. But there are other uses which address themselves to the mass. Pope tells us, to make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, live o'er such scene and be what they behold, for this the tragic news first trod the stage, commanding tears to stream through every age. And even stern crab has said, Yet virtue owns the tragic news a friend, fable her means, morality her end. She makes the vile virtue yield applause, and her own scepter while they break her laws, for vice in others is a port by all, and villains triumph when worthless fall. Shakespeare, the great mind reader, the most thorough grasper of all subtleties of human characters, wrote no fiction when he said, guilty creatures sitting at a play have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malfactions. The annals of the stage contain a number of startling instances where this has been literally the case. Markable one is recorded in the life of the English actor Ross. In my own comparatively brief experience upon the stage, I have been an eyewitness to salutary effects of this description. One occasion I have related in an earlier chapter of these memoirs. If the acting of a play has been instrumental in causing joy among the angels of heaven over one center that repenteth, what stronger proof can there be that the theater is a useful institution? If the lingering abuses in our theaters are to be reformed, it can only be done by the mediation of good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is, who, discarding the illiberal spirit which denounces without investigating, will first examine the reasons of existing abuses, then help to remedy them by their own present amongst the audience. That the very worst abuse with which any theater can be taxed may be abolished has been proved at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, the museum, and indeed all the theaters in that city for five years, and at the kneeblows in New York for a period even longer. I allude to the demoralizing effect of allowing any portion of the theater to be set aside for the reception of a class who do not come to witness the play. I believe there have been other theaters in this country where this outrage upon morality is not tolerated, and the establishments have been as prosperous as those above mentioned, but this is a difficult topic for a woman to touch upon. I cannot close these remarks upon the drama and the stage without a few words on the true position of actors. On this subject very erroneous impressions exist in the minds of those who do not frequent theaters. They are apt to look upon the actor as belonging to a distinct portion of the community, dwelling on the outside of a certain conventional pale of society which he is allowed to enter only by courtesy, unless it is broken through by the majesty of transcendent talents. Let us examine his social and political state in ancient times when the stage first sprang into existence. The profession of an actor was looked upon as honorable among the Greeks. Some of the highest offices of the state were held by players. Escalus, who framed the regular drama, held command at Marathon under Militeides. He was at once actor and author. Sophocles was a man of high rank and served under great Pericles. He was raised to the office of Archon. He appeared in his own tragedies and sang on stage the music of the lyre. Euripides, who also acted in his own productions, was a distinguished officer. The actor Neotolamus was also a tragic poet, was an ambassador and an important mission. Aristodemus was also employed on a momentous embassy. At the solicitation of Demosthenes, he received the reward of a golden crown bestowed for the faithful administration of public affairs. Cicero himself was the intimate friend of Roscus, his early tutor. The great orator says of the equally great actor, the excellences of Roscus became proverbial. The greatest praise that could be given to men of genius in that particular profession was that each was a Roscus in his art. Lilius, called the wise, and Scipio Africanus, the younger, were the warm friends and associates of the actor Terence. Julius Caesar mentions meander and Terence with respectful admiration. The noble Brutus thought it was no waste of time to journey from Rome to Naples solely to see an excellent company of comedians. Their performances delighted him so much that he sent them to Rome with letters to Cicero. They were honored with the latter's immediate patronage. Actors in all ages have been the special favorites of monarchs and high dignitaries. In modern times, from Mrs. Sidon's down to the present day, they have, in common with other artists, been received in the highest society and been treated with marked distinction. The stage at this moment is graced by members of the profession who have been honored guests of nobles and whom the magnates of more than one land have been proud to welcome as their fire signs. The odium which has attached itself to some whose talents were as a brilliant setting which lacked the center gem of paramount value can cast no more real blemish upon those who have not merited the same approach than the despotism of one king can darken the rain of his successors. If I have somewhat warmly pleaded the cause of the stage and the actor, I hope my testimony has been given as though I stood in the courts of Ariopagus, where no flowers of rhetoric were permitted to adorn and falsely color the pleader's simple statement. I have looked upon the citation of facts as my strongest arguments. These, I think, will be patiently heard and justly weighed by the impartial tribunal of the American public before which I stand to add my feeble voice to those already raised against the wrongs received by the stage, the drama and the profession. To the members of that profession whose labors and honors I shall soon cease to share, I would say, in bidding them farewell, that there are many amongst them whom I esteem, some to whom I am warmly attached, and more whose career I shall watch with anxious interest. I would beg them to believe that I sympathize in their tools, I comprehend their sacrifices, I appreciate their exertions, I respect their virtues, and I cherish the hope that, in ceasing to be ranked amongst their number, I shall not be wholly forgotten by them. In writing these memoirs, although they are expressly designed for publication, I have endeavored to divest myself of all remembrance of the reader, in the same degree that I should mentally abstract and separate myself from an audience while interpreting a character upon the stage. By accomplishing this desired end I have been enabled to give a more unreserved transcript of events than would have been otherwise possible. In an autobiography there seems a degree of egotism in the constant use of the first person singular, from which I have sought in vain some method of escape. For any consequent trenching upon the borders of good taste, I hope to be pardoned as for an unavoidable literary trespass. I have endeavored to write a simple and faithful narrative, unambitious, unembellished, nothing extenuated, and assuredly setting down nothing in malice. It is for the public to judge how imperfectly I may have executed my task. I lay down my pen with a sense of relief, which is in itself agurdium, for I have fulfilled my promise. Leave here the pages with long musings curled, and write me new my future's epigraph. End of Autobiography of an Actress, or Eight Years on the Stage by Anna Cora-Mollett