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MY FIRST VISIT BEHIND THE SCENES.

CHAPTER III.

My First Visit Behind the Scenes, an Infant in Long Clothes.-My First Appearance Before an Audience, a Child of Five Years.Children as Actors.- Ristori's Debut as a New-born Babe.-Drilling Children in the Art of Acting.-Early Distaste for the Life.-Precocious Dramatic Children.-The Bateman Sisters.-Amusing Anecdotes of Children on the Stage.—A Healthy Infant.

I cannot remember the time when I was not familiar with that curious place known both to theatricals and the outer world as Behind the Scenes. I know I was not born there; but I think I must have been carried there when I was a baby in long clothes. I cannot remember when the musty stage trappings, the pasteboard goblets, the wooden thrones, the canvas tombs, were unfamiliar sights to me.

I think I could not have been more than four or five years old when I made my first appearance on the boards ―very much against my will,--and from that period until within five years ago, when I bade farewell to the mimic stage, I hope forever, I have played, off and on, sometimes with an intermission of years, sometimes every night in the year, from babyhood up.

My childhood debut was made in the character of Cora's child in Pizarro, and subsequently as the child of Damon in the play of Damon and Pythias.

My father, if I remember rightly, was stage manager of the theatre in Cincinnati at the time.

Madame Ristori began her dramatic career earlier than this. When she was less than three months old, she was carried on the stage in a basket, to personate a new-born infant.

Cora's child and Damon's child have nothing to say;

CHILDHOOD'S PAINS.

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but I can recall this day the shudder of terror with which I received the news that I would be obliged to go on the stage at night, as Cora's child. For fancy a girl baby being fought over with broad swords by a party of actors! One of them (Rolla) seizes the child, flings it upon his shoulder, and rushes across a shaking bridge, which, after he has crossed, he knocks down with his sword, holding the unhappy child high in the air with his left hand, while he is engaged in these playful diversions with his right.

I was always sadly frightened when I was called upon to play these little parts; and although the actress who played Cora generally gave me sugar plums for being "good," I could not reconcile myself to it. My mother tried her best to relieve me from the irksome task. Sometimes they succeeded in finding another child, whose parents would hire her out for the night; but it often happened that at the last moment these people would fail to appear, and I was sent for, routed out of my first sleep to go on again to personate Cora's child.

By and by I got into "speaking parts," such as the Duke of York in Richard the Third; the child in the Rent Day, a touching domestic drama, now little played, and others.

Of course, a child has to be instructed in these speaking parts. It could scarcely be expected that the immature intellect of childhood could grasp the subtle wit of Shakspeare.

For instance, the young Duke of York says to Gloster (afterwards Richard the Third), after his brother has said: "My Lord of York will still be cross in talk ;— Uncle, your grace knows how to bear with him."

DUKE OF YORK-"You mean to bear me, not to bear with me.
Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me;

Because that I am little, like an ape,

He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders."

The last line alludes to the hump on Gloster's back, which the boy seems to think would be convenient for carrying burdens.

Now, it is of course evident that no actor comes to the morning rehearsal with a padded hump on his shoulders. Therefore, to the narrow intellect of a child it seems a stupid thing to say "This gentleman will have a hump on his shoulder at night; and you are to lift up your shoulders as if to imitate his deformity, and lay great stress on the line

"You should bear me on your shoulders.'"

All of which I remember thinking very stupid and tire

some.

I never see a child on the stage without experiencing a throb of sympathetic pity; for it does not seem to me as if any child could really like it.

Among precocious dramatic children may be named the Bateman sisters, Ellen and Kate; two sweet little playmates of mine. These little girls-with father and mother both celebrated in the theatrical world-were thrust upon the stage as early as the children of most theatrical people are. Their father (who was an excellent manager and tutor) conceived the idea of instructing them in the most difficult tragic and comic parts, hitherto only attempted by grown people; such parts as Richard the Third and Richmond, Iago, King Lear, and many others.

Their success was very surprising. They appeared in all the principal cities of the country, attracting crowded houses; then went to England, played before the Queen, who expressed herself delighted with them, and finally returned to their home in St. Louis with a snug sum of money acquired by their cleverness.