honor of John Milton, whose second wife and infant child also rest in the
church. The Milton window was erected by the late George W. Childs, of
Philadelphia; the Raleigh memorial by several American subscribers.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

BY MATTHEW WHITE, JR.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month
and Will Include All Players of Note.

BREESE EMULATED ANANIAS.

Former Farm Boy and Swimming Instructor
Told a Weird Yarn About Francis
Wilson to Get Behind Footlights.

Some very unusual experiences form the foundation-stones upon which rests
the stage career of Edmund Breese, who has become widely known for his
work as the Lion (a multimillionaire supposed to typify Rockefeller) in
the season's success, "The Lion and the Mouse."

Breese was a Brooklyn boy, with no tinge of the theater in any of his
forebears or surroundings. Before he reached his 'teens the members of his
family were in the habit of making frequent trips to Atlantic City, via
Philadelphia, where they had relatives, who now and then took young Edmund
to the play.

On one of these journeys the boy chanced to spy a notice outside the
Eleventh Street Opera House, where the Carncross Minstrels were holding
forth. This announced that a number of boys were wanted for a certain
production about to be made. Instantly young Breese was fired with the
determination to apply for a job on the stage.

Presenting himself at the box-office he made known his desires. A man
inside looked him over and said he thought he would do, and told him to
present himself on a certain day in the following week. Breese returned
home to Brooklyn all aglow with anticipation, informed his mother of his
good luck, and--well, was made very clearly to realize that school and
home and the keeping of early hours were his _metier_ just then.

It was some little time after this stirring of the Thespian bug in his
blood that he received another inoculation--also in the City of Brotherly
Love. He saw Dore Davidson in a performance of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,"
and the characterization made such an impression on him that after he
reached home he took the first opportunity of showing his mother a
duplication of it.

At first she listened with the complaisant toleration of a parent anxious
to appear interested in a child's enthusiasms, but presently young Breese
became aware that she was following his depiction with absorbed attention.