season and require the skill of the fashionable dressmaker instead of the stage costumer in construction, taxes heavily the resources of small-salaried players. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the lack of it is the bitter fruit which hangs thick upon the giant tree whose shadow falls across many a noble woman's life, wrecked in the struggle with poverty before talent is recognized. When I learned that it was at first intended to include the women of the pulpit and the women of the stage in this day's session, I remembered how, in the school for oratory where I studied, the future women ministers and players sat in their classes together and received the same instruction. Indeed no profession requires dramatic instruction so much. as that of the clergy, because the magnificent lines of Scripture need all the inspired expression that nature and art can give, that they may be uttered as grandly as written. And this profession of ours, which the idle and frivolous plunge into from vanity, which disgraced women seek in their degradation to the insult of all sincere artists, into which so many tumble without any preparation, and with some degree of success, really demands as its foundation the broadest, most liberal education, and requires not only a knowledge of some of the arts, but an intelligent appreciation of all of them. It is really a life-long study, in which success is never a satisfaction, but always a spur to fresh endeavor, a goad to greater effort, while at the last it leaves nothing but a memory which dies with the last person who has witnessed one's success.

There is among the actors in Japan a beautiful custom which gives to dramatic talent the value of inheritance, the certainty of perpetuity. Every great actor who has not a son of his own adopts a boy, to whom he gives his name; and this boy becomes to him a son and pupil, who will receive and hand down in time to a son and pupil the name and methods of the master. Thus their stage has an aristocracy of great family names and an inheritance of cumulative genius. With us "the unsubstantial pageant fades

and leaves no trace behind," for our aristocracy of art is limited.

I should like to make a special plea for the stock actresses, for I believe that the regeneration of the drama is in the hands of the stock company, and that, when the drama reaches its pristine glory and power among the arts, it will be the stock companies that will present, with a degree of perfection never reached before, the masterpieces of dramatic literature.

By stock company I mean an organization of actors, each in himself an able actor, not supporting and assisting a name of greater magnitude, but each eminent, and capable of doing his part toward giving that harmony and symmetry to a performance which makes the good play seem a real transcript of life. Such a company is the present one of the French theater, every member of which has reached the highest individual distinction in his or her line of work. Such a company is fitted to perform any play, classic or modern, tragedy or comedy. The dramas of Shakespeare could be re-illumined with such an organization. If one actor achieved distinction one night in Shylock, another of the same company at another time would display his power as Hamlet or Romeo. So with the women. All the parts would be emphasized by the actor's art according to the dramatist's aim. And so it is in the drama of to-day, which does not aspire to great efforts, because our deeds have ceased to be heroic, because war and the pomp and circumstance of war have given place to peace and the arts and graces of social and domestic life, to which the modern drama devotes itself. In this the actor of the stock company, while not, like his brothers and sisters of the past, possessing the opportunity of so great personal display, is still enabled at times to illumine with his art the simpler and less complicated conditions of his play. But the vastness of the theater-going public of to-day requires so many repetitions of a popular play that the stock actress must appear over and over in the same rôle. The person who

witnesses a performance once can not realize what it means to the actress to play the same part two, three, or four hundred times with the same degree of feeling, pathos, humor, and naturalness of charm and manner at every performance. Horsemen tell us that a horse never makes his record more than once; and some horses never make a record at all, because they are not brought on when all conditions are most favorable. An actress must make her record every night. She must not only act her best, but look her best at every performance, and under all circumstances, or be accused of retrograding.

The inspiration necessary to keep oneself up to this plane of excellence must come from the public. Applause to the actress is the breath of life to her being; it is the only recognition, the only approval, and the only indorsement which she can be assured of that makes her feel that her efforts are pleasing; she submits herself with perturbation to the suffrages of that great and inexorable being, the public. Do you wonder, then, that we come before you with fear in our hearts, and with hope that you will be satisfied with our work, and that you will show it with discrimination and wholeheartedness? It is your applause that stimulates us, takes away the mechanical feeling caused by constant repetition of the same part, and wakes up the inspirational sources of our art. The women of the domestic circle know how grateful is the approval of husband, brother, or son; how is it, therefore, with us who appeal nightly to so many whose judgment and approval is none the less pleasing? Art has its triumphs no less renowned than home, and it is from you, the people who sit in front, that we hope to win them. And in this country alone, I am sorry to say, a woman's art-life on the stage is comparatively short, for old age seldom brings honor, because of the public's constant craving after the new and the pretty at the expense of art; and yet no art can be worthy unless it is matured.

The question of stage morality - that is an incubus which has clung to the drama for many years; but the nine

teenth century has luckily dissipated the clouds of mystery and doubt that surrounded the player, and the stage has never before numbered so many worthy women as to-day. The stage itself is purer and nobler, but the publicity of its life is its stumbling block.

It might seem pertinent to explain some of the influences that prevent an actress from being exactly like other women. Does it seem possible for a woman who has to simulate a varied assortment of feelings every night to be like the woman whose every emotion is sincere and natural? A woman of the stage must lay bare her heart and soul before the public in order to present in perfection some type of woman. The artificial is always dangerous to character, whether it is the artificial in society or the artificial on the stage. It is almost menacing to moral perception to bring the most sacred impulses of womanhood down to the level of the commonplace by constant draft upon them. In every other profession a woman may keep inviolate the holy of holies of her individuality. In this alone is the veil rent, and the sacrificial flame upon her altar is lighted for the entertainment of the public. They little realize what it costs her.

There is an old story of a dancer who wore about her neck a precious chain of pearls as she came before the king; in the midst of the dance the chain parted, and the pearls were scattered beneath her flying feet. How was she to step the measure so gayly that the king should never know her care, nor the handsome courtiers smiling lightly down, nor the gentle ladies looking on in languid grace, and yet never crush a single snow-white pearl, while the cymbals clashed and the wild, glad music sounded madder and merrier, and the witchery of the dance dulled her fear and deadened her caution? The exceptional woman of exceptional breeding may, when the court pageant has passed, count her pearl chain and find it all complete, even as those which home-guarded women wear so proudly. Will you remember what it costs? Will you think of the danger-a

moment of forgetfulness, a careless step? Will you help us by understanding us— help us with your sympathy, your influence- lest we crush our pearls?

WOMAN'S WORK UPON THE STAGE ADDRESS BY JULIA MARLOWE.

To show clearly and fully woman's relation to and influence on dramatic art, it would be necessary to treat comprehensively of the whole history of the drama, which it will be impossible for me to do at this time because of the necessary brevity of this paper.

I hope to show, however, by a few historical examples and a brief discussion of woman's peculiar adaptability to the needs of the drama, not only her special fitness for dramatic expression, but also her right, by accomplishment, to the exalted position in this art which she has won, and won by courage, industry, and perseverance.

The struggle that actors have undergone for recognition, and for a respectable, established position in society, since the modern drama first appeared in the tableaux and the spectacles of the early Christian church, is now a matter of history; but it is not generally known how much more fierce has been the strife in regard to women on the stage, and how much more difficult it has been for them to convince the world at large of the importance of their hardwon position, and their beneficial influence in dramatic art.

Notwithstanding the marked disfavor with which women were first received upon the English stage, about 1660, reasonable and serious-minded persons could not fail to see the propriety of having Juliet and Desdemona acted by a girl rather than a boy. The need for the innovation is well expressed in these lines, taken from the prologue written for the introduction of the first actress: