The following letter of good counsel from Miss Cushman to young Mr. Barton is reprinted, by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., from the "Life and Letters of Charlotte Cushman." "I think if you have to wait for a while it will do you no harm. You seem to me quite frantic for immediate work; but teach yourself quiet and repose in the time you are waiting. With half your strength I could bear to wait and labor with myself to conquer _fretting_. The greatest power in the world is shown in conquest over self. More life will be worked out of you by fretting than all the stage-playing in the world. God bless you, my poor child. You have indeed trouble enough; but you have a strong and earnest spirit, and you have the true religion of labor in your heart. Therefore I have no fears for you let what will come. Let me hear from you at your leisure, and be sure you have no warmer friend than I am and wish to be." RACHEL By DUTTON COOK (1821-1858) [Illustration: Rachel.] It is told that Rachel Felix was born on March 24, 1821, at Munf, near the town of Aarau, in the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland; the burgomaster of the district simply noting in his books that upon the day stated, at the little village inn, the wife of a poor pedler had given birth to a female child. The entry included no mention of family, name, or religion, and otherwise the event was not registered in any civil or religious record. The father and mother were Abraham Felix, a Jew, born in Metz, but of German origin, and Esther Haya, his wife. They had wandered about the continent during many years, seeking a living and scarcely finding it. Several children were born to them by the wayside, as it were, on their journeyings hither and thither: Sarah in Germany, Rebecca in Lyons, Dinah in Paris, Rachel in Switzerland; and there were other infants who did not long survive their birth, succumbing to the austerities of the state of life to which they had been called. For a time, perhaps because of their numerous progeny, M. and Madame Felix settled in Lyons. Madame Felix opened a small shop and dealt in second-hand clothes; M. Felix gave lessons in German to the very few pupils he could obtain. About 1830 the family moved to Paris. They were still miserably poor. The children Sarah and Rachel, usually carrying a smaller child in their arms or wheeling it with them in a wooden cart, were sent into the streets to earn money by singing at the doors of cafes and estaminets. A musical amateur, one M. Morin, noticed the girls, questioned them, interested himself about them, and finally obtained their admission into the Government School of Sacred Music in the Rue Vaugirard. Rachel's voice did not promise much, however; as she confessed, she could not sing--she could only recite. She had received but the scantiest and meanest education; she read with difficulty; she was teaching herself writing by copying the manuscript of others. Presently she was studying elocution under M. St.