practice. For the way to learn to do a thing is to do it; and in
learning to act by acting, though there is plenty of incidental hard
drill and hard work, there is nothing commonplace or unfruitful.

What is true of the art is true also of the social life of the artist.
No sensational change has been found necessary to alter his status
though great changes have come. The stage has literally lived down
the rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, while its
professors have been simultaneously living down the prejudices which
excluded them from society. The stage is now seen to be an elevating
instead of a lowering influence on national morality, and actors and
actresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions,
exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct.
And so I would say of what we sometimes hear so much about--dramatic
reform. It is not needed; or, if it is, all the reform that is wanted
will be best effected by the operation of public opinion upon the
administration of a good theatre. That is the true reforming agency,
with this great advantage, that reforms which come by public opinion
are sure, while those which come without public opinion cannot be
relied upon. The dramatic reformers are very well-meaning people. They
show great enthusiasm. They are new converts to the theatre, most of
them, and they have the zeal of converts. But it is scarcely according
to knowledge. These ladies and gentlemen have scarcely studied the
conditions of theatrical enterprise, which must be carried on as a
business or it will fail as an art. It is an unwelcome, if not an
unwarrantable intrusion to come among our people with elaborate
advice, and endeavor to make them live after different fashions from
those which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to
attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make
louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other