ame now
slips my memory) was appearing there.

Hackett clutched my arm.

"See that!" he exclaimed. "One day you will read my name in similar
letters of fire!"

Then he aspired only to stardom, little recking that he was to become a
manager as well. But he has a foundation, broad and deep, behind him. His
father was the J.H. Hackett whose _Falstaff_ was so inimitable that it
came to be associated with him almost in the guise of a Christian name.
His mother--and a more devoted parent never lived--was also once on the
boards.

James K. was born amid the swirling waters of the St. Lawrence, on Wolfe
Island, Ontario, his father being almost seventy at the time.

The late Recorder Hackett, of New York, was a half-brother of the present
actor-manager. James has no recollection of his father, as he was scarcely
two years old when he died. His mother has been his guardian angel since
birth. She brought him up in New York City, with the idea that law should
be his life vocation; but from the age of seven, when he recited
Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in public, amateur theatricals played a
big part in his aspirations. He was in the class of '91 of the College of
the City of New York, and when he was about nineteen I remember seeing him
at the Berkeley Lyceum, in a representation by the college dramatic club,
as "_Joseph Pickle_, inclined to mischief," in "The Pink Mask."

It was his experience in performances like this that helped him to make
his start when he finally decided--as such a throng have done before
him--to abandon law in favor of the footlights. He began on March 28,
1892, in Philadelphia, with A.M. Palmer's company, then presenting "The
Broken Seal." He had only six lines to speak, but the very next week J.H.
Stoddart gave him an opening for something better, as he once gave
Mansfield, though under altogether different circumstances.

Mrs. Stoddart died suddenly, and during his absence from the company his
part of _Jean Torquerie_ was entrusted to young Hackett, who acquitted
himself so well therein that he was enabled to obtain a post with Lotta as
her leading man. Lotta's retirement threw him on the market, from which he
was removed by no less distinguished a manager than Augustin Daly.

At Daly's then he appeared as _Master Wilford_ in "The Hunchback," with
Ada Rehan as _Julia_, Isabel Irving (whom Hackett has since starred in
"The Crisis") as _Helen_, and Arthur Bourchier (now a leading
actor-manager