into their own language of Shakespeare's lines.

Tramps were to them almost always "vagrom men." When one did some very
foolish thing, he almost surely begged to be "written down an ass." The
appearance of a pretty actress in her new spring or fall gown was as
surely hailed with: "The riches of the ship have come on shore!"

I saw a pet dog break for the third time from restraint to follow his
master, who put his hand on the animal's head and rather worriedly
remarked: "'The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble--which
still'" (with a big sigh) "'we thank as love!' But you'll have to go
back, old fellow, all the same." If someone obliged you, and you
expressed the fear that you had given him trouble, he would be absolutely
certain to reply, pleasantly and quite honestly: "The labor we delight in
physics pain!" And so on and on unendingly. And I almost believe that had
an old actor seen these three great speeches: The "seven ages" of man,
"To be or not to be!" and "Othello's occupation's gone," grouped
together, he would have fallen upon his knees and become an idolator
there and then.

Yes, I found them odd people, but I liked them. The world was brightening
for me, and I felt I had a right to my share of the air and light, and as
much of God's earth as my feet could stand upon.

I had had a little part entrusted to me, too, the very first week of the
season. A young backwoods-boy, Tom Bruce, by name, and I had borrowed
some clothes and had slammed about with my gun, and spoken my few words
out loud and clear, and had met with approving looks, if not words, but
not yet was the actress aroused in me, I was still a mere school-girl
reciting her lessons. My proudest moment had been when I was allowed to
go on for the longest witch in the cauldron scene in "Macbeth." Perhaps I
might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say:
"That child will never speak those lines in the world!" and the leading
man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years
old, and had to be called a "child!"

I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines, at all hours,
under all kinds of circumstances, so that nothing should be able to
frighten me at night. And then, with my paste-board crown and white sheet
and petticoat, I boiled-up in the cauldron and gave my lines well enough
for the manager (who was _Hecate_ just then) to say low, "Good! Good!"
and the leading man next night a