rown fast
to the floor....

"'Are you going on?' cried the frantic prompter.

"She dropped her arms limply at her sides and whispered;
'I--I--c-a-n't.'

"He turned, and as he ran his imploring eye over the line of faces,
each girl shrank back from it. He reached me. I had no fear, and he
saw it.

"'Can you go on there?' he cried. I nodded.

"'Then for God's sake go--go!'

"I gave a bound and a rush that carried me half across the stage
before the manager caught me, and so, I made my first entrance on the
stage, and danced and marched and sang with the rest, and all
unconsciously took my first step on the path that I was to follow
through shadow and through sunshine--to follow by steep and stony
places, over threatening bogs, through green and pleasant meadows--to
follow steadily and faithfully for many and many a year to come."

To the surprise of every one, when salary day came around the new
ballet girl did not go to claim her week's pay. Even on the second she
was the last one to appear at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler
himself was there, and he opened the door and asked her to come in. As
she signed her name, she paused so noticeably that he laughed, and
said, "Don't you know your own name?"

The fact was, on the first day of rehearsal, when the stage-manager
had taken down all names, he called out to the latest comer, who was
staring at the scenery and did not hear him:

"Little girl, what is your name?"

Some one standing near him volunteered: "Her name is Clara Morris, or
Morrissey or Morrison, or something like that." At once he had written
down _Morris_--dropping the last syllable from her rightful name. So
when Mr. Ellsler asked, "Don't you know your name?" it was the moment
to have set the matter straight, but the young person was far too shy.
She made no reply, but signed up and received two weeks' salary as
Clara Morris, by which name she was known ever afterward.

In her story of life on the stage, she says, "After having gratefully
accepted my two weeks' earnings, Mr. Ellsler asked me why I had not
come the week before. I told him I preferred to wait because it would
seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one time. He
nodded gravely, and said, 'It was rather a large sum to have in hand
at one time,' and though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did not
suspect him of making fun of me. Then he said:

"'You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went on alone
an