rmth and comfort and
enjoying both, without any fear of the things it could not see. As I have
said before, I knew no fear, I had no ambition, I was just happy, blindly
happy; and now, all suddenly, I was to exchange this freedom of
unconsciousness for the slavery of consciousness.

CHAPTER TENTH

With Mr. Dan. Setchell I Win Applause--A Strange Experience Comes to
Me--I Know Both Fear and Ambition--The Actress is Born at Last

My manager considered me to have a real gift of comedy, and he several
times declared that my being a girl was a distinct loss to the profession
of a fine low comedian.

It was in playing a broad comedy bit that my odd experience came to me.
Mr. Dan. Setchell was the star. He was an extravagantly funny comedian,
and the laziest man I ever saw--too lazy even properly to rehearse his
most important scenes. He would sit on the prompt table--a table placed
near the footlights at rehearsal, holding the manuscript, writing
materials, etc., with a chair at either end, one for the star, the other
for the prompter or stage manager--and with his short legs dangling he
would doze a little through people's scenes, rousing himself reluctantly
for his own, but instead of rising, taking his place upon the stage, and
rehearsing properly, he would kick his legs back and forth, and, smiling
pleasantly, would lazily repeat his lines where he was, adding: "I'll be
on your right hand when I say that, Herbert. Oh, at your exit, Ellsler,
you'll leave me in the centre, but when you come back you'll find me down
left."

After telling James Lewis several times at what places he would find him
at night, Lewis remarked, in despair: "Well, God knows where you'll find
_me_ at night!"

"Oh, never mind, old man," answered the ever-smiling, steadily kicking
Setchell, "if you're there, all right; if you're not there, no matter!"
which was not exactly flattering.

Of course such rehearsals led to many errors at night, but Mr. Setchell
cleverly covered them up from the knowledge of the laughing audience.

It is hard to imagine that lazy, smiling presence in the midst of awful
disaster, but he was one of the victims of a dreadful shipwreck while
making the voyage to Australia. Bat-blind to the future, he at that time
laughed and comfortably shirked his work in the day-time, and made others
laugh when he did his work at night.

In one of his plays I did a small part with him--I was his wife, a former
old maid o