Clara Morris

“ Actors and certain critics knew that that swallow-like skimming from laughing badinage to biting satire—that fine restraint, that incredible lightness of touch was backed by certainty, that certainty meant knowledge, and that knowledge meant work. Yet, though Thrall told her again and again that she had in herself the same mocking spirit that informed Beatrice, she would have it that he and he alone had made the performance possible to her. And though he denied it, the assertion was like nectar to the vanity of the artist—like balm to the heart of the man who longed to serve her. ”

“ The Regular Season Opens—I have a Small Part to Play—I am among Lovers of Shakespeare—I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the Charm.
Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to learn something of another world—fairy-like in fascination, marvellous in reality. ”

“ He understood; but instead of simply resuming where he had left off, from force of habit he first gave the leader's usual three sharp taps upon his music desk, and then—so queer a thing is an audience—those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there into laughter. By sixes and sevens, then by tens and twenties, they sheepishly seated themselves, only turning their heads with pitying looks while the ushers removed the unconscious woman. ”

“ Peal after peal of laughter from Sybil brought Stivers to the door, pale and with distinctly frightened eyes. "In the name of heaven, what's the matter with you? Stop it! stop it! You're fey—that's what you are! Ill will come of it—now mind!"
"Fey?" repeated Sybil, gurgling still with laughter. "What is fey, Mrs. Stivers? Why, you look quite frightened!"
"You laugh in a room all by yourself! You're fey, and that means you're sort of possessed. It's an evil spirit of mischievous fun that takes hold of you just before a stroke of bad luck comes upon you. ”

“ It is not the work, but the motive, the spirit that actuates the work; whether embroidering stoles, sawing wood, washing dishes, or acting, if it is done honestly, for the glory of the holy name, why may one not pray for divine help?
One lady, who, poor soul, should have been born two or three hundred years ago, when her narrowness would have been more natural, is shocked, almost indignant; and though she is good enough to say she does not accuse me of "intentional sacrilege," still, addressing a prayer to God from a theatre is nothing less in her eyes than profanation. ”

“ Just so a woman has closed between the long-past years the love affairs of her girlhood—mere names, dull and meaningless they may seem to you, but her memory gives to them eye-sparkle, smile-flash, the swift word, the knightly act, and no matter what change time and the world may have wrought upon these men, in the heart of the woman whom they once loved, they remain ever young, ever admirable. ”

“ Poor "Rose of May," whose sweetness comes to us across the ages! As the garden-spider's air-spun silken thread is cast from bough to twig across the path, so her fragile thread of life looped itself from father to lover, to brother, to queen, and all the web was threaded thick with maiden's tears, made opalescent by rosy love, green hope, and violet despair. But each one she clung to raised a hand to brush the fragile thing aside, and so destroyed it utterly. Yet that tangled wreck of beauty, sweetness, and "a young maid's wits," remains one of the world's dearest possessions—the fair Ophelia! ”

“ It was a dreary job, for surely one can find no more desolate and melancholy place in a great city than a theatre seen by daylight. From the front of the house one receives an impression of loss. The sight of an empty chair is saddening—here are a thousand of them. This dimness and vastness, this gilding and crystal and metal that does not glisten nor glitter. The depressing silence of checked music, of vanished laughter—even an actor shivers at sight of the auditorium of a closed theatre; it is like looking on the face of a dead pleasure. ”

“ A strange, great stillness seemed to close about me; something murmured: "In the future, in the dim future, a woman may cause this many-headed monster you fear to think as one mind, to feel as one heart! Then the bit and bridle will be changed—that woman will hold the reins and will drive the public!" At which I broke into shrill laughter, in spite of flowing tears. Two women came in, one said: "Why, what on earth's the matter? Have they blown you up for your didoes to-night? What need you care, you pleased the audience?" ”

“ You will do independent work, good work, and will never be quite satisfied with it, but will eagerly try again, for great artists are so constituted; and the hard life of disappointments, self-sacrifices, and many partings, where strong, sweet friendships are formed only to be broken by travelling orders, will all be forgotten when, the glamour of the footlights upon you, saturated with light, thrilling to music, intoxicated with applause, you find the audience is an instrument for you to play upon at will. ”

“ She is not a wife! Our wedded life is a monstrous hypocrisy! We are false to ourselves, false to society, false in word, deed, and thought! And yet she is a good woman, whose legal and technical virtue would certainly have given her the valued right to hurl rocks at the woman taken in adultery. Wife? She? The woman whose companionship dragged me down to a lower level than that at which she found me? Oh, I see in your cloudy, scornful face your contempt for the man who blames a woman, and Lettice Rowland Thrall should not be censured for not giving what she has not to give! ”

“ That the homely, tender-hearted "Father Abraham," rare combination of courage, justice, and humanity, died at an actor's hand will be a grief, a horror, and a shame to the profession forever—yet I cannot believe that John Wilkes Booth was "the leader of a band of bloody conspirators!"
Who shall draw a line and say: here genius ends and madness begins? There was that touch of "strangeness." In Edwin Booth it was a profound melancholy; in John it was an exaggeration of spirit, almost a wildness. There was the natural vanity of the actor, too, who craves a dramatic situation in real life. ”

“ I must first shake that positive conviction each writer has, that she is the only one that burns with the high ambition to be an actress, who hopes and fears, and secretly studies Juliet. It would be difficult to convince her that her own state, her own city, yes, her own block, could each produce a girl who firmly believes that her talent is equally great, and who has just the same strength of hope for the future stage existence. ”

“ Sybil shot a quick sidelong glance at her sister, hesitated a moment, then stopped, bent her head, and whispered, rapidly: "Lord! dear Lord! who seems always so far off, hear me, I pray! Soften this woman's heart toward me, incline her to help me, not because of any merit, but because of my great need. In your blessed Son's name I ask it. Amen!"
And then she hurried on ahead, while Dorothy, radiant with faith, scrabbled and slipped and laughed quite happily as they came out upon the wide, shady avenue, short of breath but sound of limb and skirt and shoe. ”