PUT ASIDE PREJUDICE.

21

So the book will find place, in some of its pages, for illustrations of all these phases of the "show business." But, at the same time, the chief concern of the book will be with the theatrical world proper, the stage, the drama, actors and actresses, theatres and those who are employed in them, in various capacities.

Here, at the gates of the subject, I have only one request to make of my reader,—namely, that he or she will put aside prejudice, either for or against the "show" world, in any of its branches, remembering that between the two extremes of extravagant denunciation and servile flattery there is a golden mean of truth and justice.

This honest middle ground I shall try to occupy as fairly as I can. And of one thing the reader may rest assured, namely, that throughout this book, whether dealing with lofty themes or with little ones, the aim of its author is to furnish the truth in everything. Whatever faults these pages may exhibit, one virtue I am determined they shall possess, the virtue of truthfulness. For the truth is the one thing in the world of literature which is the rarest. Of critically excellent books, of entertaining books, of books which do credit to the intellectual powers of their producers, the world has no lack; but of books which tell the straightforward truth, there have never been enough, I take it, for the world's good.

Recollections of Early Life.-Cornelius A. Logan, Comedian, Critic, and Poet.--Vicissitudes of a Strange Career.-How a Family of Girls took to the Stage. - Reminiscences of Cincinnati. - Floating down the Ohio.-Residence in Philadelphia.-The Comedian as his Contemporaries Saw Him.-The Critic and the Poet as his Works Show Him.— His Defense of the Stage.

My earliest recollections are of the city of Cincinnati, whither I was borne while yet an infant, and where I spent the "happy days of childhood."

There are many magnificent monuments at the cemetery of "Spring Grove," in Cincinnati, but for me it contains but one grave. A simple headstone, with name and date of death, and then only the solitary line:

"Our Father who art in heaven."

This is the grave of Cornelius A. Logan, "Comedian, Critic and Poet."

My father's domestic circle was a large one, and composed principally of those troublesome members of the human family,-girls. Six girls, two boys, father and mother, ten persons whose livelihood was to come from the dusty precincts of behind the scenes! It is not, perhaps, in the best taste to put forward biographical details when one is not writing a biography, but my father's history has always seemed to me so full of romance, so very much out of the beaten track of ordinary life, that without further apology I will here jot down some of its salient events.

My father's family were people of rank in Ireland, who had once owned large estates, and held important offices in Church and State; but misfortune having overtaken

them, the younger members of the family resolved to leave the green hills and the emerald lakes of the unfortunate Island, and see if Fate would not have better things in store for them in this far-distant land.

Soon after their arrival, my father was born. In early years his family decided that he should enter the priesthood, and placing him in a Catholic College, near Baltimore, they looked forward fondly to the day when he should emerge from this educational and religious sanctuary with the greatest honors.

But these bright dreams were never to be realized. Whether from a restless disposition, on my father's part, or from undue severity on the part of the priests who had his body and mind in charge, he chafed under his bondage, and finally ran away from the college,―escaping at night, like a prisoner from jail.

After this his life was like a boat drifting on an open sea. Eighteen years of age, with magnificent health and peculiar personal beauty, an indignant family, outraged tutors, a classical scholar, and not a cent in his pocket. He went to sea.

Shipwreck, mutiny, horror, rat-eating, China!
He came back again.

Poverty,-family still angry,-nothing to do.
Nothing to do, that is, but fall in love and marry.
Then children, and the universal problem which so
troubled the old woman who lived in a shoe.

First, the literary life-notorious for its starving pay, -then tutorship-more starvation, then to writing newspaper criticisms on the actors; then, with a profound. conviction that he could act better than the men he was writing about, he went on the stage,-and did act better.

And in this way the theatrical life-the hard battle with the world, with unjust prejudice, with many professors of religion, whose hearts, beyond any one's else in

24

EARLY LIFE IN CINCINNATI.

the world, should be open to the woes and the weaknesses of all,-began not only for father and mother, but, in course of time, for six innocent and pure-minded girls.

The boys were, like all boys, more fortunate than their sisters; all the trades and professions are open to boys. One chose to be a doctor, the other a lawyer. But what medical college, or what law office, would graduate girls, fifteen or twenty years ago?

And so, one by one, as necessity urged, myself and every one of my sisters were made familiar with the hardships and the pleasures, the jealousies, the vanities, the wit, the jollity, and the toil of life Behind the Scenes.

But my recollections of Cincinnati are not altogether of a theatrical character. In the earliest years of my girlhood my own connection with the stage was very slight. My father was ambitious that his children should be thoroughly prepared for the battle of life, and to the full extent of his ability furnished every educational facility to them. I attended the Wesleyan Female Seminary in Cincinnati during a portion of my girlhood; and memory says much that is pleasant to me in that connection. Still, I have never been one of the sort who look back upon their school-days through a rose-colored pair of spectacles. To me, the fairy tales of youth are told chiefly in connection with the Ohio river, whose boatmen's song was once so popular with the negro minstrels :

"Oh-ho! On we go!
Floatin' down de O-hi-o!"

I mind me well during the months favorable for navigation, how much the fashion it was for the gilded youth of Cincinnati, male and female, to take boat at the spacious wharf of their Queen City, and-not because they wanted to go there, but only because they enjoyed the trip,-be off to Louisville early in the morning-"Off to Louisville afore de broke ob day."

were.

STEAMBOATING ON THE OHIO.

25

The gilded youth took boat-and such boats as they The Ben. Franklin, the Lady Washington, the Fashion-que-sais je! These were the boats, my friends, you have read about.

The jolly Captain, red of face, flush of pocket, heavy with antique watch-fob and glittering diamond pin, with a curious golden tail spreading over the snowy shirt front; he who interested himself personally in the comfort of every traveler-especially of every lady traveler-and made himself beloved by every creature in or out of his service. Oh, where is he?

What merry, merry parties have sailed down that muddy old Ohio, landed at the towns on its shores, waved handkerchiefs to passing craft, laughed, danced, and sung! The beautiful Sallie Ward, whose loveliness was renowned from the sources of the Ohio to the Gulf; Therese Chalfant, the belle of the Queen City for many a long day; Olivia Groesbeck, who married Gen. Hooker two years ago, and died a few months since, at Watertown, N. Y.; all these were frequent passengers by the "Loueeville packets."

I was only a child when I used to see these fair women come aboard-come aboard with their cavaliers, who were dressed "up to the nines," as the saying went; regular "bucks" you know; for a "swell" was a "buck" some ten or fifteen years ago.

I have questioned memory since I began writing this, how it happened that I came to be a passenger so frequently on the "Loueeville packets," and memory has answered that I went to school with a girl whose father was a river captain, and whom (for he loved her passing well) he allowed to bring her schoolmates for the "trip and back" on the river. We lived on the boat while we lay in port, I remember, and very good living it was.

I was a child of the most uninteresting age when all