One must know something of the general
calling to know what those afflictions are. A lady who had been
upon the stage from her earliest childhood till she was a blooming
woman, and who came from a long line of provincial actors and
actresses, once said to me when she was happily married; when she
was rich, beloved, courted; when she was mistress of a fine house--
once said to me at the head of her own table, surrounded by
distinguished guests of every degree, "Oh, but I have never
forgotten the hard time when I was on the stage, and when my baby
brother died, and when my poor mother and I brought the little baby
from Ireland to England, and acted three nights in England, as we
had acted three nights in Ireland, with the pretty creature lying
upon the only bed in our lodging before we got the money to pay for
its funeral."
Ladies and gentlemen, such things are, every day, to this hour;
but, happily, at this day and in this hour this association has
arisen to be the timely friend of such great distress.
It is not often the fault of the sufferers that they fall into
these straits. Struggling artists must necessarily change from
place to place, and thus it frequently happens that they become, as
it were, strangers in every place, and very slight circumstances--a
passing illness, the sickness of the husband, wife, or child, a
serious town, an anathematising expounder of the gospel of
gentleness and forbearance--any one of these causes may often in a
few hours wreck them upon a rock in the barren ocean; and then,
happily, this society, with the swift alacrity of the life-boat,
dashes to the rescue, and takes them off.
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