University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

The travellers prepared to set forth at an early
hour on the ensuing morning. The adventures of
the night had tended somewhat to sour the usually
sweet temper of the actor. His legs, which he displayed
to the wonder and commiseration of his
companion, were skinned from knee to ankle, in a
way perfectly mysterious to the sufferer, who could
not conceive how such an affliction could have arisen
simply from his playing Romeo to empty boxes.

“And yet it seemed to me, among other things,
that it wasn't Romeo, neither, but Hamlet. I was in
the grave, grappling—I'll be sworn upon it—with
Laertes, with whom I `fought a long hour by
Shrewsbury clock.' It must have been in the grave
that I got these bruises.”

That imperfect state of mind which, in dreams, so
happily unites the fanciful with the actual, had, in
fact, produced a rapid transition in his thoughts from
the one play to the other, while his involuntary
struggle in the hole with the outlaw suggested a
similitude of circumstances so favourable for a

change of scene; and the dawning of his right
reason, which the struggle necessarily occasioned,
forced upon him the partial conviction that some
other man, of considerable brawn and muscle, had,
like himself, been dreaming a part also, which had
given the performance a termination so perfectly
tragical. His inspection of his saddle-bags contributed
in some little degree to his confusion. The
contents were in strange disorder.

“Could I have been so d—d stupid as to have
dressed myself in costume? I don't recollect putting
it back, and if I did, I must have shown a singular
indifference to Romeo's wardrobe to have put it up
without folding. Look here, Harry Vernon, what a
bunch I've made of it in my sleep; a bag from a
beggar's press—and the garment perfectly new—a
splendid garment, for which that skunk of a tailor
amerced me in a greater number of dad's dollars
than I should be altogether willing to count up in his
hearing. You shall see me put it on. You shall—
you shall form an idea of the sort of chap that
C—dwell quarrelled with;—you shall see the figure,
at least, of a Romeo not to be met with every day.”

This scene was going on in the chamber prior to
their appearance before the family in the hall. They
had been already summoned to an early breakfast,
which Vernon, before retiring for the night, had
especially solicited. He now ventured to remind
the actor that the family and breakfast waited upon
them.

“Only a moment!” exclaimed the actor hurriedly,
as he proceeded to envelope himself in the glittering
garment of the amorous Montague—“only for a
moment! It's worth a glance from a veteran stager.
Ha! what's this?—a hole! a rent!”

The exclamation of the actor, distinguished by
tones expressive not merely of surprise, but consternation

and horror, drew the attention of Vernon to
the dress, in which an envious nail—probably while
old Yarbers was inspecting the glittering sack beneath
the house—had torn a finger's breadth.

“What the d—l shall I do?—what a misfortune!”
exclaimed the actor, with a degree of concern infinitely
greater than any that his bruised shins had
occasioned.

“It's but a small hole: it's easily mended,” said
Vernon.

“Small!” exclaimed the actor, with some indignation.
“Ay, ay, not so deep as a well, nor so wide
as a church door, but 'tis enough to call for the instant
succour of a darning needle. Juliet, that is to
say, my little Mary, here, shall take it up off hand.
She's a nice, handy body, that; would make, with
training, an admirable Juliet—'gad, 'twould be a
charity to give her lessons, and I'll think of it. But
to the Romeo—she shall take up the rent in the
twinkling of an eye.”

“Surely, Mr. Horsey, you will not delay us for so
small a matter.”

“Small a matter, indeed! By St. David's best
buckles, Harry, you have a strangely irreverent way
about you! Such a rent in Romeo's body is no
small matter. Let the audience see a hole in a hero's
breeches, and d—me if it don't turn all his tragedy
into farce. I once saw a chap named Barnes playing
Lear, with his shirt—an ugly corner of it, I mean—
depending, for all the world like a streamer, fully a
quarter of a yard from his inexpressibles. The
audience roared with admiration, which Barnes took
for applause. Never did a fellow play so furiously
fine—with so much earnestness and enthusiasm.
But the more fire he put into his acting, the more it
filled them with laughter; all of which he mistook,
like an ass as he was, for pleasure at his performance.

On a sudden, however, he happened to
fling his left hand behind him, in order to adjust his
sword, and he grasped along with it the obtrusive
garment. You never saw a fellow's comb cut so
short off. He lost his voice in an instant—his head
dropped, and when he came round to the wing, the
sweat stood upon his brow like treacle. No, no! I
am clear that no man should make his bow to the
public with a hole in his breeches.”

Vernon expostulated against the delay, but in
vain. A new measure suggested itself to his companion.

“While her hand's in at one thing, she can do the
other, or I'll do it myself. I'll get Mary to heat me
an iron, and I'll smooth it before I start. It's ruined
for ever if I put it back in this condition.”

Vernon saw that expostulation and entreaty were
alike vain. Horsey made a point of healing Romeo's
hurts—the ruling passion rendering him equally obstinate
to argument and entreaty; and with a complacency
as enviable in the eye of a traveller as it
is desirable in that of an actor, he sallied from his
chamber with the fractured garment in his hand,
and proceeded instantly and without circumlocution,
to declare his requisitions to mother and daughter.

“Get your needle, my little Juliet, and show me
what sort of a workman you are; but first put me
an iron to warm; I must take out these wrinkles.”

The girl willingly assumed the performance of the
task set her, and Horsey sat down the while to
breakfast, but his eyes were upon her as she sewed,
and more than once he started up to look at her
progress.

“Well enough done, Mary. You are the girl
after my own heart. Egad, if my wardrobe suffers
much more injury in this fashion, I shall not be able
to do without you. I shall have to come and steal

you from mamma. A stitch or two more just there,
Mary, if you please; and now that I look at it, just
beneath the arm I see that a thread has dropped.
The garment is rather tight over the shoulders, and
it is only a timely precaution that would guard
against the strain of any great action in that quarter.
A man's blood gets up wondrously, Harry, when
he's in the fury of a fifth act—when he's warmed by
opposition, and, more than all, by his own rising consciousness
of what is called for by the character.
At such a time his action increases accordingly, and
it would be the most awkward thing in the world, if,
extending his arm to convey the idea of command,
to order Buckingham's head off, or any matter of
equal tragic signification, he should discover to the
inquisitive audience a rent under the arm, and a
glimmer of a white cotton shirt beneath his buckram.
It's the easiest thing in the world to upset the gravity
of an audience in the deepest scenes. One fool
makes many, and the first booby that laughs out,
without any fear of shame, finds a hundred followers.
I've seen it a thousand times, and know there
is nothing so tragic as will frighten farce. Farce follows
tragedy as naturally as the sparks fly upward.
She stands beside her, ready to grin at the first opening;
and let dignity forget herself for an instant, she
claps her hands, and darts in, without any regard to
decency, before all the spectators.”

Thus rambling on, the actor ate his breakfast, and
watched the progress of Mary with her needle. The
bright eyes of the girl laughed the while, and her
cheeks blushed, when he hung over her; his glances
being equally shared between the sempstress and the
garment. The breakfast over, Vernon, with some
consternation, beheld him proceeding to assist the mother
and daughter in removing the plates and dishes
in order to convert the table into a tailor's board, on

which he could perform the last-needed office of
smoothing out the rumpled Romeo. Old Yarbers
looked on with a scarcely-suppressed smile, which
was not lessened as the actor confessed to having
disordered his wardrobe in his night-errant habits.
He could have told a truer story, and have accounted
more truly, if not more rationally, for the condition
of the saddle-bags. But he was prudent enough to
conceal his knowledge, and suppress, though with
difficulty, his laughter. The actor had made a clean
breast, and declared the true cause of the uproar of
last night to the family. There was nothing retentive
in his nature, unless it might be in the one purpose
of his mood; and prattling ever, like the downward
running fountain, his streams, the deeps and
shallows alike, were equally open to the sunlight.
Harry Vernon, meanwhile, became impatient to the
last degree. Not that he had any reason to wait for
Horsey, beyond that of mere civility. He well knew
that, before the day was out, they would reach the
spot where diverging roads should prove convincingly
to the actor that his course was other than
that which he had so precipitately and erroneously
assumed to be the same with his own. To hurry
off before his companion was ready, in order that
he might anticipate this truth, would at least seem
rude, if it were not so in reality; and then the
utter simplicity and good nature of the actor pleaded
in his behalf, and made Vernon, who was generously
and nobly constituted, reluctant to do any
thing which might inflict unnecessary pain, even
though he well knew that a nature so mercurial as
that of Horsey would not feel it long. Resolved,
therefore, to await the actor's pleasure, he sat resigned
to his fate, and beheld him removing the
hominy, the remnants of the bacon and eggs—the
mother, father and daughter, equally, and in vain,
striving to prevent him from performing duties so
seemingly inconsistent with the dignity of a gentleman
and the position of a guest. But his activity
set their exertions at defiance. Plate followed plate,
and dish dish, and cup cup, without stop or stay,
until, striving to sweep up in one common effort the
remaining odds and ends, he grappled them quite too
unceremoniously together, and, to his own horror,
and the great reddening of the hostess's cheeks, they
came in undistinguishable ruin to the ground.

“Bless my soul, Mrs. Yarbers, but what have I
done? I have broken all your cups and saucers.”

“No! never mind, Mr. Horsey,” stammered the
old lady, half angry with her old favourite, yet doing
her utmost to conceal her annoyance.

“It's very unfortunate. I certainly had 'em fast,
my dear madam. I could carry twice as many.
I'll show you now, I'll bring back, in two turns, all
that I have carried to the shelf;” and he actually
proceeded to restore the plates and dishes to the
table—“and if I break so much as a teacup, I'll
give my head for a football. It was certainly the
strangest misfortune.”

Vernon interposed.

“Certainly it was, Mr. Horsey—a sort of fatality
which can no more be accounted for than helped.
All that you can do is to send Mrs. Yarbers a fine
set from Vicksburg or Natchez, and take care to
meddle with no more cups and saucers. The table
is ready for you now—why not smooth the garment?”

“True, true, my cousin of Vernon, that is a good
thought; and Bess—hold me your debtor for a set of
china, the best that money can get in Natchez. Nay,
nay, I will have no refusal—it must be so. You shall
have the cups and saucers; I swear it by my Romeo,
which stands waiting for smoothing. Let me have

the iron, Mary,—nay, don't burn your pretty fingers
with it—let me have it.”

“It's hot, Mr. Horsey. Better take it up with the
towel, sir,” said the girl. But the rapid actor had
already grasped the iron at the fire, with a rapidity
only exceeded by the haste with which he dropped
it again; and he now stood blowing his fingers, his
face red as a lobster's with the sudden pain, and his
mouth puffing and speaking alternately.

“Hot as—phew! phew!—the skin's off fingers as
well as legs. Phew! Harry, my dear fellow, what an
accident! Ay, do, Mary, that's a dear girl—do you
iron it for me. Let your iron lie smoothly, Mary,
my dear, and take care that it doesn't scorch Romeo
as it has scorched me. That blue is very perishable
—phew!—the misfortune of all things that are very
beautiful. There, there—I think that will do. It must
do. I won't worry you to work for me any longer,
my sweet Juliet. Mrs. Yarbers, why didn't you call
your daughter Juliet, instead of Mary?”

“As well might Mrs. Yarbers ask why you were
not called Romeo, instead of Tom, Mr. Horsey.
The one question might be answered just as readily
as the other. But time presses on me, if not on you,
and if you are disposed to stop until you have revised
all the Christian names in the county, there is
certainly no good reason why I should linger to assist
you.”

“Right, Harry,—there's right and reason in what
you say. Mrs. Yarbers, the best friends must part
—you shall hear of me soon, and see me again when
I have got through my business above. Mary, my
dear, you shall be my Juliet,—nay, don't look down
—I tell you it shall be so. There shall go an oath
to it that shall bind one of us, at least; and unless
Mr. Mabry steps between us both—ha! so you turn

away—you do not like that,—well, I like you the
better that you do not; and so good-bye. `It is a
grief so brief to part' with thee. Come, Harry
Vernon, I am ready now.”

The actor had prolonged the parting words and
moments to the last possible limits, and somewhat to
the surprise of Vernon, he saw, or fancied he saw,
an expression of seriousness and interest, rather beyond
that of his ordinary manner, conspicuous in
what he said and looked to the lovely forest damsel.
Nor, on the other hand, did it seem to Vernon that
the girl was entirely without some consciousness of
the interest which she occasioned, and that which
she felt, for her little rosy lips quivered as she spoke
to them at parting, and the “good-bye” trembled
in imperfect expression upon her scarcely opened
mouth. Mrs. Yarbers was pleased to assure both
the travellers that nothing would gladden her more
than to see them often; a compliment which she
then repeated to Horsey in particular; and one, in
approbation of which, her lord and master growled
out certain confirmatory, but scarcely intelligible,
sentences. For a brief space after their departure
from the hovel, the spirits of Horsey seemed considerably
depressed. He said but little, and that
little with the air of a man who speaks rather to
avoid the imputation of sullenness, than with any
desire to please. When he did speak more freely,
and with the gradual assumption of his former mood,
his expressions revealed the true source of his
solemnity.

“There is something monstrous uncomfortable at
parting, Harry, even with acquaintances of yesterday.
I don't get over it for an hour or two. It
seems to me like rooting me up, and tearing off
some of my leaves and branches, when I am compelled
to grapple hands only to cast them loose

again. It's true it don't make me sick—for that
matter I shouldn't go to bed, I believe, or lose
stomach for a dinner, if I was to be separated for
ever from the best friends in the world. I should
only, if that were the case, take a pine torch in my
fingers, and go about looking after others; and a
newer set might soon console me for the lost. But
it seems to weigh me down,—my limbs grow
weakish, and I lose all desire to make any exertions
and scarcely care to say or hear any thing, though
the best passage offered itself for quotation, jump to
the moment, from Billy Shakspeare, that High Treasurer
of all manner of spoken jewels. Now I feel
just so in leaving these good people. It's true Brown
Bess is an old crony. I know nothing about her
husband, who seems but a curmudgeon; but that
dear little creature—that Mary—don't you think her
devilish handsome, Harry? What a forehead she
has! what lips, eyes, hair! A very collection of
beauties! Celia, Rosalind, and Helen, melted into
one; and yet, Harry, she did not speak twenty
words to me the whole time she was present.”

“How could she—who can, Mr. Horsey?” replied
Vernon, laughing, “you out-talked the whole
family.”

“The lawyer, also. By my faith, Harry, but that
I heard you make a long and good speech at Raymond,
I should be inclined to say you had taken
up the wrong profession. Now I should have been
the lawyer.”

“You mistake. You would soon ruin yourself as
a lawyer. You would soon talk yourself away. A
lawyer's words are the materials he works with,—
you would soon dull them, or wear them out. Your
talking lawyer is a profligate who cheapens his own
wares by making them common. To talk in the
right place is his art, no less than to talk to the purpose.

The where, and the when, and the how much,
are the three grand requisites of public speaking.”

“Egad, if that be the case, Harry, I should be
soon swallowed up; for, as to stopping to think when
I should speak, and what I should say, that would
seem to be the most idle, as it would certainly be, in
my case, the most impracticable thing in the world.
For that matter, I don't know half the time that I'm
talking, even when my tongue is most busy `beating
all the chimes of Westminster.' I catch myself,
every now and then, speechifying of my own head,
or giving a reading from Shakspeare to pine trees
and gray mosses, wasting myself, as the rose does
its sweetness, upon the desert air, when I can get no
better audience. Such, I trust, will not be our fate
at Benton, however, if Tilton has any skill in management,
and the Yazooians any taste. By the
splinters, you shall see how I shall drive; nay,
there's no good reason why I should not give you a
sample now. Here's a quiet spot—looks for all the
world as if it was meant for such a purpose. There
is a space on the brow of the hill which would accommodate
a thousand people, and the pines rise,
and the oaks spread above and around it, and the
vines link them together and fill up the space between;
so that the amphitheatre of the Romans was
never so compact, and not half so well covered.
And, in the woods, with green leaves around me, my
voice seems to have a volume and a clearness that
I cannot always command in a building. Ride up
with me for a minute, and you shall see as good an
imitation of Forrest—did you ever meet with Forrest,
Harry? A splendid, half-savage-looking fellow
—a sort of Mark Antony before dinner—who, by
the way, would make a figure in Dryden's Antony,
perhaps superior to any who has yet tried it. But I
will show you Forrest in Damon,—you shall have

the strangling scene—I'll choke a pine sapling for
Lucullus—I'll—”

He commenced riding up the hill as he spoke, but
Vernon stopped him.

“I ride on, Mr. Horsey. I would not now stop to
see Forrest himself.”

“The d—l you wouldn't.”

“No, on my soul I wouldn't.”

The actor stared.

“Harry Vernon, you are a bundle of mysteries.
How can it be that you love the stage?—nay, how
can you yourself play with any hope of success unless
you are willing to behold the best models?”

“Your remark reminds me of the error under
which you have laboured so long and under which
you still labour;” was the reply of Vernon expressed
in looks equally grave with his language. “I will
not ask, Mr. Horsey, by what means, or by whom,
you became possessed of the idea that I entertained
a passion for the stage and had resolved to go upon
it. It is enough that such is your delusion, entertained
in spite of my earnest and repeated assurances
that such was not my intention—that I had no
such passion, and that I was already earnestly and
irrevocably bound to the pursuit of another profession—one
of the most jealous as the most absorbing
—which will suffer neither rival nor interruption.
With a most unbecoming resoluteness you refused
credence to my own assurances to this effect, and
have appointed yourself my travelling companion,
without knowing how far I desired company, or
whether your presence might not somewhat interfere
with the object of my pursuit. It has not been
through your forbearance, Mr. Horsey, that it has
not done so, and I trust you will believe me when I
tell you that it has been with me a serious fear that
such might be its effect. Finding you possessed

with this strange notion, and having exhausted all
my forms of speech in seeking to convince you that
I was no actor, and did not intend to become one, I
forebore—in consideration of your parents, who have
treated me so kindly, and with some reference to
yourself, for I am not blind to your good qualities
and natural parts—farther expostulation and complaint,
and was contented that you should remain in
your error for awhile, satisfied that it would not be
very long before you would be disabused of it. That
time is now at hand; a few miles farther will bring
us to the forks, and you will then find that I will
certainly take the upper road for Beattie's Bluff,
while you, if your aim be Benton, will as certainly
take that which crosses the river below. It only remains
that I should again assure you, with all the
solemnity of an oath, though I make none, that I am
by profession a lawyer, that I have never dreamed of
any other, and do not know, and have never thought
to inquire, whether I have the most partial qualification
for the stage. I admire good acting, am not
deficient in a knowledge of the best dramatists, can
quote Shakspeare almost as frequently, if not so
felicitously as yourself, and, at another time than
this,—with less care upon my mind, and less business
upon my hands,—I should be particularly
pleased to hear you in any, and all, of your favourite
parts. Believe me, Mr. Horsey, from what I have
already seen, I am prepared to believe that it is in
your power, with study, industry, and humility, to
rise to considerable distinction in your art.”

“Say you so, Harry? Then I forgive you all the
rest. I forgive you all that d—d dignity that makes
me feel all over as if Carter himself had caught me
playing tricks with my neighbours' sign boards, and
was scoring me hip and thigh with a most thorny
morality. But, Harry, do you really think from

what you have seen that I should become a proper
actor?”

“I do, really, Mr. Horsey.”

“That is to say with study and industry. But
what do you mean by humility? I don't see any
necessity for humility. Indeed, that's the last matter
that a modern actor esteems as a requisite.”

“The most necessary of all, for without humility
one learns nothing. He will neither see in what he
is himself defective, nor in what consists his rival's
superiority. He can learn nothing who believes
there is little left him to learn, and he alone learns
all that man can teach, who is humble enough to
doubt his own possessions, and hopeful enough to
labour for their increase. I should have high hopes
of you, Mr. Horsey, could you bring yourself to this
conviction.”

“God bless you, my dear fellow, these are devilish
kind words of yours. Devilish kind! I'm d—nably
unused to them. I've heard nothing all my life but
censure; sneer and censure. Managers, and actors,
and audience,—no, d—me, I won't say any thing
about the audience, they have always treated me well
enough whenever I had fair play before them,—but,
by my soul, I can't say the same for my brother
actors, and still less favourably can I speak of managers.
Had I believed them, I should have cut my
throat, or turned in as a wagoner, or taken to some
other villanous handicraft which only suffers a man
to know that he is alive at meal-time. They have
denied all my hopes and decried all my talents; and
then came doubts to my mind;—doubts—dark, dirty,
earth-whelming, miserable doubts, Mr. Vernon, that
made my soul sick, and made me feel as if I could
steal away into some dark corner of the woods and
die; satisfied, if out of human sight, that they spoke

nothing but the truth—that I had deceived myself—
that, in short, I had none of that genius, the fires of
which I fancied to be blazing away proudly and in-extinguishably
in soul and brain. Oh, Harry Vernon,
these were killing, crushing doubts, and when they
came to me, as they always did when I was out of
money, and the d—d tailors and tavern-keepers at
my heels, I felt all over as the meanest of all possible
beings. But you cheer me; your words—for I believe
you, Harry, to be a d—d smart fellow—your
words reassure me. I feel my courage rise; I feel
the fire blazing up within me, and by all that's resolute
in man, it shall blaze out, ere many days, to the
satisfaction of others. But, though you give me life,
Harry, curse me but you crush me again when you
tell me you are not one of us. I can hardly believe
you even now. I heard it so solemnly asserted, and,
indeed, lost and paid a bet on the matter.”

“Something strange, at least, in all this business,”
said Vernon, curiously. “Pray where did you hear
this story?”

“In Raymond, while you were talking in the
court-house.”

“My talking in the court-house, alone, should
have sufficed to prove my profession.”

“Yes, it would, and it did, at first; but there was
a d—d plausible story told me about the matter,
which made me throw it all up as so much gammon.”

“And who took so much interest in me, and so
much pains to lead you astray in this matter, Mr.
Horsey? Can you remember?”

The actor, without hesitation, gave full details of
the conference with Hawkins and Saxon in the village
of Raymond, narrated such portions of the
dialogue as had special reference to theatricals and

his companion's probable connexion with them, and
from the succinctness of his statements, and the
clearness with which he repeated the several parts
taken by the two, he soon convinced Vernon that
there must have been a sinister purpose in the minds
of the men who made such seemingly gratuitous
mis-statements. The name of Hawkins strengthened
this conviction.

“Hawkins, Hawkins! That was the name of the
man whom the governor arrested.”

“The same,” replied Horsey. “He's a strange
sort of suspicious chap. Every body thinks there's
something wrong about him, but they can't tell what.
He gambles, they all know; but he's so cunning they
can find nothing worse against him; though I've no
doubt they're right in thinking him a great rascal.”

“Indeed! and can it be that you value your character
so little as to consort with a fellow whom you
think a rascal?”

“Ah, Harry, there you have me. But, truth to
speak, a poor devil like myself, whom one set snarls
at, and the other laughs at, is devilish well satisfied
to get a companion who will do neither, without
being particularly anxious to know whether he's as
good a man as he should be, or even as he appears.
Besides, let me tell you, Hawkins is a smart fellow.
He has Shakspeare at his fingers' ends, and I've
seen him throw that into his face, while he's been
going through a part of Iago, which would send a
shiver through pit and gallery at a glance.”

“Enough: these men have lied to you, Mr. Horsey,
at least so far as I have been concerned. They
have, I gather from your account of it, used you as
a spy upon me.”

“The devil you say?”

“Think over the matter yourself, my friend, and

you cannot escape this conviction. They have flattered
your ruling passion, and have gleaned from
you all the knowledge of me and my movements
which might have been in your possession. Fortunately,
you knew nothing, and could reveal nothing,
—nothing at least of very serious importance.
Whether any thing worse will grow out of it than
this wild-goose chase upon which they have sent
you, it is impossible now to say. It will be important,
however, that we should both be cautious in
our future progress.”

“Spoken like a book, Harry. But why the d—l
should these fellows want to know your movements,
—heh? So you have secrets, Harry—there is a
mystery—there—”

“Professional and personal, purely, Mr. Horsey,
and when I tell you this much, I trust, I secure myself
against further inquiry. To convince you, however,
that I regard you with interest and favour, I
make free to counsel you to return to your friends
and family. I do not believe this story of theatrical
establishments at Benton and other places. The
country is unfit for, and unable to support them. A
circus, now, would be more reasonable; a place for
ground and lofty tumbling; but, seriously, I look upon
the dramatic art as utterly foreign to such regions
as the Yazoo. There is, as yet, no settled population.
The country is uncleared, and thoroughly
wild; settled by squatters, chiefly—without means,
tastes, education, or sensibility; rude, rough people;
a people peculiarly fitted for the conquest of savages
and savage lands, but utterly incapable of appreciating
an art so exquisite and intellectual as that of
the legitimate drama. Go back, and if it be your
resolute determination to seek for fame in the prosecution
of your present purpose—which I would not

counsel—seek it, then, where only it is to be found.
Go to the large cities—go to the largest. Where
the ability exists to pay best, there will always the
best talent assemble—there will the true standards
of critical judgment be formed, and rival powers will
soon reduce each other to their just level, until
which there can be no certain reputation. There is
something very puny in the judgment of small communities;
and something very contemptible in being
a little lion in a little plain. Go to the ring where all
the challengers assemble, and strike the shield of the
most insolent and bold. When you have done this,
you will find your level, and what is of more importance
to you still, you will have justly arrived at a
knowledge of your own strength. Till then, you
walk in vapour, and the stars which shine above you
are far or near, according to the wind and the weather,
your own caprice of mood, or the caprice of
feeling and judgment of those with whom you mingle.
Understand me, Mr. Horsey, I do not counsel
you by what I have said, to pursue the stage. Far
from it. I believe the glories of the profession to be
very uncertain, and its golden rewards, half the time,
to be visionary; besides, it is attended by a thousand
defeats and humiliations which are gall and wormwood
to the independent spirit. On this head, you
know best what you will do, and to your calm, common-sense
reflection, I am willing to leave it. But if
you are resolved to be an actor, then it is my advice
that you break ground where the audience is large,
and where the competitors are many; where you will
be compelled to take pains to preserve rank and respectability,
and where no petty management or
petty clique can prevent your efforts, or do injustice
to your performance. Go to the great city, if you
must act, and throw yourself upon the waters. Remember
the noble chorus in your own favourite
play,
It is only, you perceive, where the field is large,—
commensurate to the greatness of the actor—that he
can be like himself,—that he can do justice to himself,
or feel that ambitious spurring of the soul
which is conscious always of her true occasions.”