Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/155

Rh I am sorry that you appreciate it. Otherwise you might make it sound human."

At the next rehearsal the beautiful line was spoken with all the feeling of "Please pass the potatoes."

When Herne protested, the actor defended himself, saying, "I am speaking it naturally, as you instructed me to."

"So I see," said Herne. "The next thing you should learn is the difference between acting naturally and natural acting."

As Mr. Nugent pungently put it, "The stage hand who sets a chair out and ducks for the shelter of the wings is acting naturally, but he looks like a fleeting pair of pants just the same."

I learned more of what I may know of acting in a brief association with Joseph Jefferson than in all my time in the theater previously. Mr. Jefferson arranged a benefit at the Fifth Avenue Theater in the middle nineties for Charles W. Couldock, the original Dunstan Kirke in "Hazel Kirke", whom I have mentioned earlier. Couldock was growing old after thirty years in America without a visit to his home in England. An extremely good actor, he had been improvident and was in need, a tragedy then more commonplace in the theater than now.