HERE is no habit more tenacious than the habit of work. Once acquire it, and you are helpless. You may never "loaf and invite soul," you cannot lounge about with your hands in your lap, doing nothing the fair long day. In reality, to the victim of the working habit there are no long days; they are all short days. Like many another, I realised my danger when too late. When I came to New York, and the continued run of a play left me some hours of the day without work, I immediately went forth and hunted work to fill them up with. It was thus I came to make the acquaintance of that Monsieur Fasquelle of France, who had so much anxiety as to the whereabouts of his brother-in-law's hat and the butcher's candlestick. An excellent grammarian, Monsieur Fasquelle, but a bit eccentric as a conversationalist, it always seems to me. I saw my danger then, but the habit was already too strong, and alas! it is not broken yet. Therefore it is not surprising that when I began to star, finding considerable time in which I used to study plays unoccupied, I turned my attention to the subject of matrimony. And let me say here that the actress, even the sentimental one, generally arranges her marriage with brevity, celerity, and despatch. She cannot for her life bring herself to look upon her wedding as a matter of world-moving importance, as does the girl in private life, who, judging by her own excitement, pride, display, and momentary supremacy, decides that her marriage is nothing short of a social cataclysm.
Late in the sixties actors still had their costumes carried to and from the theatre in champagne baskets by the "basket-boy," and the very first and most important duty of the actor or actress, after rehearsal, was to get the basket ready and place it outside the door; then, only, one might feel free.
Well, Cupid had been taking a little flyer behind the scenes, and a young comedian had been stricken with love for a bit of a girl who danced between the first play and the farce. One day he saw the old leader of the orchestra tap her cheek with his bow, and the awful familiarity was too much to be endured—silently. He walked home with her, and, in the boarding-house hall, he spoke. A minister's name was mentioned—a number—a street—something about a license. Nothing seemed very clear, except his love and his desire to get married at once—at once!
"Oh, Lizzie, will you marry me? Dear little Lizzie! will you?" he implored.
And Lizzie, who was about the height of a nine years' old child, but was full sixteen, very pink and very pleased, looked coyly up, then modestly down, and answered; "I'm awfully glad you love me, Ted, but—but, really, you know, you'll have to wait a little!"
Down went Ted's face. "Wait!" he cried, in a tragic voice. "Wait! Good kingdom! Why? What for? How long?"
And Lizzie, with wide, reproachful blue eyes, said: "Why, Ted, you know well enough you'll have to wait till I get my basket ready."
And when he heard the thump of that article at his sweetheart's door, he issued forth from his room, tied the strings of her bonnet under her chin, and they sallied forth and were married. And it is gratifying to know that that knot was not only simply and swiftly tied, but securely, too, for though they endured many hardships, faced many troubles, lost two wee lambs from the little flock sent to them, while the blackest kind of a small goat was spared for them to struggle with, yet the sorrow and shame of divorce came never near them—never! And love lasted while life lasted.