Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/20

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN world gets little enough of it. It is more than sweet; it is an insidious habit-forming drug. Given a regular supply, the addict's eyes shine with an unnatural glitter; denied it, his cheeks cave in. Politicians also know these ecstasies and torments. It is not a pretty sight to see a broken actor or an ex-mayor frantically shaking the empty vial of incense.

Even the other arts offer no such reward as the stage. The lawyer may sway a jury as few actors can an audience, but bailiffs are at hand to stop a demonstration. The minister may only surmise the effect of his pulpit oratory; it is not decorous to cheer in church. The soldier wastes twenty years in sagebrush barracks waiting for his war. The writer must work indefinitely to win a public, and then his laurels are apt to be too much like a kiss by telephone. The painter and the sculptor commonly leave their rewards to be collected by their heirs. But the response to the actor is immediate, direct, ungrudging, complete. Small wonder that the stage never lacks for apprentices.

I was born to the stage, although, paradoxically, both my father and my mother came from stock that never set foot in a theater and thought it the vestibuled limited to Hades.