Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE STROLLER. BIDDING farewell to home and family, to friends and companions, Edwin Forrest crossed the Alleghany Mountains to begin at Pittsburg, in October, 1822, the serious business of his life. His path, which hitherto had lain along pleasant places, was now to widen into that crowded thoroughfare where man jostles man in the struggle for the goal, and along which are strewn the bodies of the many who faint and fall by the way. His endowments were youth, good health, high spirits, and a superb physique, — qualities essential to success in any calling, but particularly so in the race for histrionic honors. He had seen the best models, he had sat at the feet of the greatest masters of his art then known in any land; he had tasted the sweets of popularity early, and had found savor therein. He was now to set out upon a new venture. The amateur had filled his cup of happiness with the admiration which is spontaneously given ; he had gained thunders of applause for his unpaid labors, but was now to begin his work in earnest, and to toil for bread. He was destined to find his honors well earned ere they were gained, his bread dearly bought before it reached his lips. The life of a strolling player in 1881 is not a comfortable one; in 1821 it must have been simply miserable vagabondage, where the stroller shared with the gypsy the shelter of the hedge, with the beggar sometimes the broken crust; where cuffs and stripes and sorrows were plenty, and God's sunny blessings few and far between. If we could look into the theatre in which Forrest's professional life began, we would see no such temple as that which testifies to the wealth, the culture, and the love of the drama shown in the Pittsburg of today. In 1822 the city must have confined its theatrical desires ...