Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/29

Rh he lacks concentration. I do not associate him with briefs, somehow, but his voice, his physique, his presence should make him a rare pleader."

That voice, physique and presence already were posturing in amateur theatricals. My first amateur performance must date back at least as far as my tenth year. My mother had taken me to Boston, where we were visiting the Frederick Whitwells. Either young Fred, aged eleven, or his sister Natalie, aged eight, had a birthday during my stay, and as part of the occasion Natalie had written a play unbeknown to her elders, which we children presented as a surprise. The guns of the Civil War were scarcely cool, and the play opened with the outbreak of hostilities.

Four little husbands bade an affecting goodby to four little wives in Act One, and were off to the wars. Three years elapsed between the two acts, during which time the characters aged alarmingly. The curtain of Act Two disclosed four little wives, old and gray, thanks to charcoal wrinkles and much flour on the hair. They sat knitting by the fireside when the four little husbands limped home from the wars, one by one. This one had lost a leg at Shiloh, that one an arm at Antietam, a third was much the worse