Stage Fright

In discussing stage fright an oíd actor said : "It is not the sightof the audience go much as its sound that worries the beginner. Probably very iew persons realize what noise an average audience makes. It is not loud or definite, bnt a steady suppressed hum, like the whir of the Broadway cable. It is the cornbination of those little noises which are present in every large assemblance, no mattar hovc attentive and respectful. One moves an arm, another adjusts a skirt, a third rustles a programme, a fouith coughs, and so on. It is the strangeness and indeflniteness of the conglomérate of these sounds that startles and npsets the beginner. He cannot analyze them, and they sound angry and throatening to him. "I know that I did not get accustomed to the noise for some nights. The first time I went on the stage I did not see the audience at all, for the footlights seemed so high and broad that they made a wall of nre beyond which I conld see nothing. The raurrnur of the audience on the other side of that wall was awful. I quakedwith thefeelingof a wretch pursued by a mob and convinced that there is no escape. "It is popularly supposed that only beginners suffer from stage fright, and that it eoon disappears. There are successful actorsand actresses who have attacks of the same sort every time they go on the stage, and who will never get over them. "-