rent direction. But this was after he had
formed a partnership with James Mackin, with whom he toured the country as
one of a song-and-dance team. The two played a long engagement in New York
with the San Francisco Minstrels at their "opera house," now the Princess
Theater.

Instructor in Fencing.

Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about
realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts
at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten
dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he
made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay
by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was
specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now
Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.

These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts,
and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street
Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and
another as the _Baron_ in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement
as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable
hit as _Cadeaux_, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."

It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to
Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money,
and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same
theater--the Broadway--in "The Oolah."

Snatched Victory from Defeat.

The curtain fell on what even the actors were forced to admit to
themselves and one another was a failure. Gloom thick as night pervaded
the region behind. For a while Wilson sat there with his head in his
hands; then his indomitable courage asserted itself, and he sprang up with
the exclamation:

"We have got to make this go. Let's get to work at it."

His company stood nobly by him. His leading woman, Marie Jansen, and the
other principals, begged him not to consider them in the alterations, but
to give the public more of himself. With much cutting and slashing of the
book and innumerable rehearsals, the thing was whipped into shape, and
turned out one of the successes of the season. It was followed the next
year by "The Merry Monarch," which placed Wilson securely on the throne he
continued to occupy until last year, when he decided to step down--or
rat