ive failure of their education,
eke out a tortured existence, hoping against hope for the golden crown of
fame and fortune.

In sober truth the fatal lack in most of these disappointed seekers is not
that they have no talent, but that they are too lazy mentally to make a
real success of the natural aptitudes they have. They lack "the infinite
capacity for taking pains." They are deluded by the idea that success
depends upon inspiration--that there is no perspiration. Yet every great
writer, every great musician, every great actor, every great author, knows
that there is no fame, there is no possibility of success, except through
the most prolonged and painstaking drudgery.

"LIFE IS BRIEF--ART IS LONG"

Perhaps no actor of modern times had greater dramatic talents inborn than
Richard Mansfield, yet here is the story of how Richard Mansfield[6]
worked, toiled, starved and suffered in achieving success in his art:

His friends crowded St. George's Hall for his first appearance. It was
observed, as he uttered the few lines of the Beadle, that he was
excessively nervous. When, later in the evening, he sat down at the piano
and struck a preliminary chord, he fainted dead away.

[Footnote 6: From "Richard Mansfield," by Paul Wilstach. Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York.]

Mr. Reed relieved him of his position at once. In discharging him, he
said: 'You are the most nervous man I have ever seen,' It was not all
nervousness, however. Mansfield had not eaten for three days. He had
fainted from hunger.

"Mansfield was now on evil days, indeed. He moved into obscure quarters
and fought the hard fight. It was years before he would speak of these
experiences. In fact, he rarely ruminated on the past in the confidences
of either conversation or correspondence. Memory troubled him little and
by the universal quotation it withheld its pleasures. He dwelt in the
present, with his eyes and hopes on the future. It was always the future
with him. No pleasure or attainment brought complete satisfaction. He
looked to the past only in relation to the future; for experience, for
example, for what to avoid.

"Once, when at the meridian of his fame, he was asked to lecture before
the faculty and students of the University of Chicago. For his subject he
chose, 'On Going on the Stage.' That he might exploit to those before him
the reality of the actor's struggle, he lifted for the first time a corner
of that veil of mystery which hung bet