His father held the horse while Billy climbed on again.

"Are you ready, cowboy?" the foreman looked up at his son and smiled. After some hard efforts the kid smiled back, and answered:

"Yes, Dad, let him go."

The pony lit into bucking the minute he was loose this time and seemed to mean business from the start. Time and time again Billy's hand reached down as to grab the horn, I could see it was hard for him, but he kept away from it.

The little horse was bucking pretty good, and for a kid Billy was doing mighty fine, but the horse still proved too much for him. Billy kept a getting further and further away from the saddle till finally he slid along the pony's shoulder and to the ground once again.

The kid was up before his dad could get to him and he begin looking for his horse right away.

'I don't think you'd better try to ride him any more to-day, Sonny," he says as he brushed some of the dust off the kid's clothes, "maybe to-morrow you can ride him easy."

Billy sneaked a glance my way, maybe he was only trying to get a hint from my expression (if I had any) as to what he should do. Anyway, as he turned and seen the horse, challenging him, seemed like, the kid crossed the corral, caught the black, blindfolded him, and climbed him again.

It was then I figgered again that another little hunk of advice wouldn't go bad, I walked up to the kid, touched his chap' leg before he'd reached to pull off

T was in a court of law that Junius Brutus Booth played his first dramatic rôle. Though he was but a lad of thirteen, clad in a schoolboy's jacket and trousers, he was already performing the character destined to become peculiarly his own in maturer years-the villain of the play. Against him stood the heroine, a neighbor's serving-maid, clamoring that justice should atone for her lost virtue. The senior Booth, a respectable attorney of Saint Pancras parish in London, pleaded in vain to the magistrates that such precocity on the part of his child was impossible the law took its course and little Junius was judged guilty of illegal paternity.

In such beginnings did the tempestuous career of Booth find its start. Blown in turn by his erratic will to a choice of vocations as midshipman in the navy, as printer, lawyer, sculptor, it was inevitable that the stage should catch him up and make an actor of him.

This was with a company of strollers at the age of seventeen as Campillo, a minor character in "The Honeymoon." Through the winter he played nothing but "bits," showing no evidence of talent and meeting little but discouragement, and in the following May he sailed with Jonas and Penley's troupe for Amsterdam on board a Dutch lugger.

An early biographer describes young Booth in the hold of this vessel when he first beheld him-"A handsome youth with a look that betrayed no ordinary degree of intelligence, seated astride a barrel eating a meat pie and shouting: 'By Holy Paul, I will not dine until his head be brought before me!""

His fortunes were not bettered by this Netherland experience, although he rose in rank among the itinerants until he was given the opportunity of appearing as Richard III. He arrived in England in April, 1815, practically penniless, accompanied by a pretty young wife, who had eloped with him from under the nose of her objecting mother, a French milliner in Brussels. Although a marriage ceremony had been performed at Ostend, the knot was tied tighter by a second wedding at Saint George's-Bloomsbury when the pair reached London. This marriage appears to have been the result of youthful impulse and did not last. Booth deserted his little Belgian bride, Mary Christine Adelaide Delannoy, and later took to wife Mary Ann Holmes.

Affairs now moved quickly. Booth had been seen and his acting noted by critical eyes. After some tentative summer engagements in the provinces, he was established as a member of the Covent Garden Theatre Company in London at a weekly salary of £2. During his second season at this house he was given his chance in his favorite part of Richard III. He appears to have been eminently successful and, as often happens in the theatre, his success went to his head.

He began to squabble with the management. He was underpaid. What had genius, capable of setting the town by the ears as Richard, to do with £2 per week? He would have none of it.

In the midst of the row, the great Edmund Kean swooped down upon him and bore him off in his carriage to the rival house in Drury Lane, where the committee at once signed him on at a salary more commensurate with his position. Scarcely was the ink of the agreement dry when plans were put forth for the joint ap

pearance of Kean and Booth at Drury Lane Theatre as Othello and Iago. The occasion was notable-the theatre was packed with an excited audience. Kean outdid himself in an evident effort to obscure his young rival by his own brilliancy as Othello, and Booth bore himself bravely as Iago. It must be remembered that the new aspirant to fame was but twenty years old and had had but a four seasons' knowledge of acting.

Against him was pitted the experience of a veteran and the worship of a host of fanatic adorers for their idol. In the reflection of the next day Booth came to his senses. He rubbed his eyes and examined his contract. To his consternation he discovered that he had agreed to play only the supporting parts to Kean-not one of his own favorite characters would be allowed to him. What a fool he had been! He had killed his opportunities of a great future at Covent Garden merely to be smothered by the jealousy of Edmund Kean at Drury Lane.

On the night of February 25, 1817, pandemonium was let loose at Covent Garden Theatre, crowded to suffocation long before the hour for the curtain. When Booth appeared he was greeted by a tumult of hostility. From pit to gallery insulting speeches and cries of execration were hurled at him, and confusion grew

The enthusiastic praise of his friends and the favorable reviews of his Iago meant nothing now. Othello was announced for repetition the following evening, and all London was clamoring for the occasion. With his mind in a whirl he fled the city for Tottenham unable to face a second encounter with Kean.

Meanwhile the fatted calf was preparing at Covent Garden, and the prodigal returned, hurt and sore, to a forgiving and more liberal management. Handbills were put out at once announcing his appearance there as Richard.

confounded when his friends endeavored to combat the attack by their shouts of applause.

The

pose of driving the newcomer from the stage. Cries of "Liar! Pretender! Cheat! Imitator of Kean!" came from every side. Booth attempted to frame an apology-he was howled down. Fawcett, the manager, appeared and endeavored to explain-he could not be heard.

Placards on poles were displayed which

read:

"Grant Silence to Explain" "Mr. Booth is Willing to Apologize" "Can Englishmen Condemn Unheard?"

It was all unavailing--the riot continued throughout the performance. Disorder was redoubled on the following night.

A placard reading,

"He Has Been Punished Enough,"

was shown, and

"Let Us Forgive Him"

and received with jeers and yells.

The third attempt was also unsuccessful, although the play was given in entirety, the actors scarcely able to hear their own voices. And all this because an actor had broken a managerial contract!

At succeeding appearances the opposition slowly subsided. Deter

mination and the

thick skin essential to those who pursued the actor's calling a century ago won through, and Booth stood more securely on his London pedestal.

Booth. He was going through his lines with the utmost indifference. The inertia engendered by a forty-four-day voyage in a schooner was a handicap he could not at once throw off. His land legs wouldn't behave, and he was evidently confused by his new environment. Suddenly in the fourth act of the play his old fire returned and the audience was electrified. Never

At the end of three years that were significant in his triumphs and also for the beginning of his mental aberrations he sailed for America.

This truly was a land of liberty for him-here was no cabal-no precedent, no rival, and, above all, no punishment for whatever antic disposition he chose to put on whatever wild debauchery.

Landing at Norfolk with his new wife and a piebald pony he had bought before sailing from England, he proceeded to Richmond, where he found a company playing, and at once effected an arrangement to appear with them. His reputation had come over the seas and on the 6th of July, 1821, the house was packed for the opening night of his favorite Richard.

During the earlier acts the audience showed a distinct disappointment in his acting and began to think it was an impostor who had assumed the name of

before had a Richmond audience seen acting so overwhelming as was presented by this little man who had landed on our shores quite mysteriously and unheralded. The city seethed with a new sensation. After four nights he accepted an offer from Petersburg. Ludlow, a member of the company in that town, describes his astonishment at his first sight of the celebrity: "The play was called for rehearsal at ten o'clock,

A. M. At the proper time they commenced, but Mr. Booth had not arrived. The manager said the rehearsal must go on. I think the fourth act had been reached when a small man whom I took to be a well-grown boy of about sixteen years came running up the stairs, wearing a roundabout jacket and a cheap straw hat, both covered with dust, and inquired for the stage-manager. Mr. Russell, on observing him, hurried toward us, and cordially grasping the hand of the strange man exclaimed: Ah! Mr. Booth, I am glad you have arrived. We were fearful something serious had happened to you?' No man was ever more astonished than I was just then at beholding this meeting. I began to think Russell was trying to put off some joke upon us. Is it possible this can be the great Mr. Booth that Russell says is undoubtedly the best actor living!