o were there for the fault of those who remained
away.

However, during the week's engagement of which I have been speaking, I
had two nights in the ballet, then again I was cast for an important
part. It was a white-letter day for me, professionally, for, thanks to
Mr. Davenport, I learned for the first time the immense value of
"business" alone, an action unsustained perhaps by a single word. I am
not positive, but I believe the play was "A Soldier of Fortune" or "The
Lion of St. Mark"--anyway it was a romantic drama. My part was not very
long, but it had one most important scene with the hero. It was one of
those parts that are talked about so much during the play that they gain
a sort of fictitious value. At rehearsal I could not help noticing how
fixedly Mr. Davenport kept gazing at me. His frown grew deeper and deeper
as I read my lines, and I was growing most desperately frightened, when
he suddenly exclaimed: "Wait a minute!" I stopped; he went on roughly,
still staring hard at me, "I don't know whether you are worth breaking a
vow for or not."

Naturally I had nothing to say. He walked up the stage; as he came down,
he said: "I've kept that promise for ten years, but you seem such an
honest little soul about your work--I've a good mind, yes, I have a
mind----"

He sat down on the edge of the prompt-table, and though he addressed
himself seemingly to me alone, the whole company were listening
attentively.

"When I first started out starring I honestly believed I had a mission to
teach other less experienced actors how to act. I had made a close study
of the plays I was to present, as well as of my own especial parts in
them, and I actually thought it was my duty to impart my knowledge to
those actors who were strange in them. Yes, that's the kind of a fool I
was. I used to explain and describe, and show how, and work and sweat,
and for my pains I received behind my back curses for keeping them so
long at rehearsals, and before my face stolid indifference or a thinly
veiled implication that I was grossly insulting them by my minute
directions. Both myself and my voice were pretty well used up before I
realized that my work had been wasted, my good intentions damned, that I
had not been the leaven that could lighten the lump of stupid
self-satisfaction we call the 'profession'; and I took solemn oath to
myself never again to volunteer any advice, any suggestion, any hint as
to reading, or business, or make-up