ountered from the despots over him--all painted pictures on his
memory and fed a fire under the furnace of his nature which tempered the
steel in his composition to inflexibility. The stern rod of discipline was
held over him every moment and often fell with unforgetable severity. He
was trained by autocrats in a school of experience more autocratic than
anything known to the younger actors of this generation.

"When the part of Chevrial was given to him, Mansfield was fascinated with
his opportunity, but he kept his counsel. He applied every resource of his
ability to the composition of his performance of the decrepit old rake.
He sought specialists on the infirmities of roues; he studied specimens in
clubs, on the avenue, and in hospitals; and in the privacy of his own room
he practiced make-ups for the part every spare moment. The rehearsals
themselves were sufficiently uneventful. He gave evidence of a careful,
workmanlike performance, but promise of nothing more.

"While he was working out the part Mansfield scarcely ate or slept. He had
a habit of dining with a group of young Bohemians at a table d'hote in
Sixth Avenue. The means of none of them made regularity at these
forty-cent banquets possible, so his absence was meaningless. One evening,
however, he dropped into his accustomed chair, but tasted nothing.

"'What's the matter, Mansfield?' asked one of the others.

"To-morrow night I shall be famous,' he said. 'Come and see the play,'

"His friends were accustomed to lofty talk from him. His prophecy was
answered with a light laugh and it had passed out of their memories as
they drifted into the night. This was one of those intuitions to which he
often confessed, and it told him that the years of apprenticeship were
behind him and the artist in him was on the eve of acknowledgment.

"On the night of January 11, 1883, the theatre was radiant with an
expectant audience--half convinced in advance by the record of the Union
Square's past, but by the same token exacting to a merciless degree--to
see their old friends in the first performance in America of 'A Parisian
Romance.'

"Mansfield made his entrance as the Baron Chevrial within a few moments
after the rise of the curtain. It was effected in an unconcerned silence
on the part of the audience.

"There were, on the other hand, the deserved receptions of old favorites
by old friends, as Miss Jewett, Miss Vernon, Miss Carey, Mr. DeBelleville,
Mr. Parselle a