early struggles of the great actors: Edmund Kean, who on the eve of
his first appearance at Drury Lane cried, "If I succeed I shall go
mad!"; of Henry Irving (then at his zenith) and the five hundred
parts he had played before he came to London; he recalled also the
failure of Disraeli's first speech in the House of Commons and his
triumphant prophecy. He had dreams of that manager on his bended
knees, imploring him, with prayerful hands and streaming eyes, to
play Hamlet at a salary of a thousand a week and of himself
haughtily snapping his fingers at the paltry fellow.

Well, which one of us who has ever dreamed at all has not had such
dreams at twenty? Let him cast at Paul the first stone.

And then, you must remember, Paul's faith in his vague but glorious
destiny was the dynamic force of his young life. Its essential
mystery kept him alert and buoyant. His keen, self-centred mind
realized that his search on the stage for the true expression of his
genius was only empirical. If he failed there, it was for him to try
a hundred other spheres until he found the right one. But just as in
his childish days he could not understand why he was not supreme in
everything, so now he could not appreciate the charge of wooden
inferiority brought against him by theatrical managers.

He had been on the stage about three years when for the first time
in his emancipated life something like a calamity befell him. He
lost Jane. Like most calamities it happened in a foolishly
accidental manner. He received a letter from Jane during the last
three weeks of a tour--they always kept up an affectionate but
desultory correspondence--giving a new address. The lease of her
aunt's house having fallen in, they were moving to the south side of