Pauline Hall's active life on the stage began when she was about fifteen years old. She was born in Cincinnati about 1860 in rather humble quarters in the rear of her father's apothecary shop on Seventh Street. She bore the somewhat formidable and decidedly German name of Pauline Fredericka Schmidgall, until she adopted the simple and harmonious stage name of Pauline Hall. It was in 1875, at Robinson's Opera House in Cincinnati, under the management of Colonel R. E. J. Miles, that Miss Hall made her first appearance on the stage. She began at the very bottom of the ladder, an "extra girl" in the chorus and a dancer in the ballet. Next she journeyed to the Grand Opera House in the same city, a theatre which was also under Colonel Miles's management, where she remained until the versatile Mr. Miles organized and put on the road his "America's Racing Association and Hippodrome," a circus-like enterprise. She was made a feature in the street parade tableaux of Mazeppa used to advertise the attraction, and a very effective figure she must have been, too, for she was a handsome girl and a picture of physical perfection. Besides luring the public to the show, Miss Hall entertained it after it got there by driving a Roman chariot in the races. After a summer of this exciting work Miss Hall returned to the theatre as a member of the chorus of the Alice Oates Opera Company, which was at that time making a Western tour under the management of the same Colonel Miles. Alice Oates was then in her prime, and the most popular operatic star in the country. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and educated in Louisville. When she was nineteen years old she made her debut in Chicago in the Darnley burlesque, "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." She sang in "The Little Duke," "The Mascotte," "The Pretty Perfumer," "The Princess of Trebizonde," "The Grand Duchess," and "Olivette," and was one of the first of the many Ralph Rackstraws in "Pinafore" in this country. She died in Philadelphia on January 11, 1887, at the early age of thirty-seven years. She was small of figure and pretty of face, unusually so off the stage and dazzlingly so on the stage. Her voice was of rare compass and sympathetic in tone, and her acting was vivacious, dashing, and hearty. After leaving the Alice Oates Company, small parts in Samuel Colville Folly company gave Miss Hall a slight advance in the theatrical world, and then she made her first and only appearance in the "legitimate." She joined Mary Anderson's company, and for three or four months acted minor characters in the plays of Miss Anderson's repertory, which at that time was somewhat limited. Among Miss Hall's parts were Lady Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet" and the Widow Melnotte in Lord Bulwer Lytton's stilted melodrama, "The Lady of Lyons."