oth my father and mother
were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my
small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.

"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that
for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten
teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell.
But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the
close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the
kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they
came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of
a grade in the primary department.

To Teach or Not to Teach.

"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and
began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a
schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady
my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came
home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.

"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her,
by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play.
Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in
the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to
do it.'

"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman
in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the
part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the
notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights
possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."

After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an
opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week,
which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on
Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous
a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her debut in February, 1899, but
lasted only two nights.

Too Good for Daly's.

"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company
will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the
dramatic critic of the New York _Sun_ observed at the time. "A short
career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of
'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'