how he sweats under a wig or beneath grease-paint; let him try walking about naked in a frost, or running about, wrapped up in wadding, in a Turkish bath; let him see if he can stand eight hours of running, yelling, whispering, eating his meals hurriedly out of pieces of paper, wearing stinking stuff on his nose, being baked by hot reflectors, blown about by hurricanes from trap-doors, seeing about as much real daylight as a miner, being covered with dirt by everything he touches, not daring to sneeze for thirty minutes, wearing a waistcoat impregnated by the sweat of twenty predecessors, throwing off his clothes six times from his overheated, steaming nakedness, acting while he has some troublesome illness or disease—let him suffer these and many other evils that an actor must endure in playing a part : while an actor who has no part to play is even worse off!
“Let us begin, then,” cries the unfeeling producer, and a few wheezing figures begin to reel about the stage reciting, as though with their last gasp, a text which has become
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