“I need not tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that I am gratified to see this large assemblage before me; and I have an additional gratification when I remember that among my troops of friends I have now a military troop who have done me the honor to grace my name by associating it with their soldier-like corps. This night, ladies and gentlemen, ends my labors _inside_ of the theatre for the season. I call them labors, for no one who has not experienced the toil of acting such parts as I have been called upon nightly to present to you, can have any idea of the labor, both mental and physical, required in the performance of the task. They who suppose the actor’s life to be one of comparative ease mistake the fact egregiously. My experience has shown me that it is one of unremitting toil. In no other profession in the world is high eminence so difficult to reach as in ours. This proposition becomes evident when you remember how many of rare talents and accomplishments essay to mount the histrionic ladder, and how very few approach its topmost round. My earliest ambition was distinction upon the stage; and while yet a mere child I shaped my course to reach the wished-for goal. I soon became aware that distinction in any vocation was only to be won by hard work and by an unfailing self-reliance. And I resolved ‘with such jewels as the exploring mind Brings from the caves of knowledge, to buy my ransom From those twin jailers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune.’ I resolved to educate myself; not that education only which belongs to the schools, and which is often comprised in a knowledge of mere words, but that other education of the world which makes words things. I resolved to educate myself as Garrick, and Kemble, and Cooke, and, last and greatest of all, Edmund Kean, had done. As he had done before me, I educated myself. The self-same volume from which the Bard of Avon drew his power of mastery lay open before me also,—the infallible volume of Nature. And in the pages of that great book, as in the pages of its epitome, the works of Shakspeare, I have conned the lessons of my glorious art. The philosopher-poet had taught me that ‘The proper study of mankind is man;’