Page:On the Stage—and Off - Jerome (1885).djvu/15



comes a time in every one's life when he feels he was born to be an actor. Something within him tells him that he is the coming man, and that one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to shew them how the thing's done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week.

This sort of thing generally takes a man when he is about nineteen, and lasts till he is nearly twenty. But he doesn't know this at the time. He thinks he has got hold of an inspiration all to himself—a kind of solemn "call," which it would be wicked to disregard; and when he finds that there are obstacles in the way of his immediate appearance as Hamlet at a leading West-end theatre, he is blighted.

I myself caught it in the usual course. I was