The misfortune is that few young actresses--if any--say to themselves deliberately that they will aim at character parts, or old-woman parts. Nearly all the old-woman and _grande-dame_ characters are played by actresses who have been leading ladies and during some period have had the painful experience of failing, on account of their age, to get the engagements they have sought. The Juliet of one season is not the Nurse or the Lady Capulet of the next; a considerable time passes before there is such a shift of characters, and she acts nothing at all during the interregnum, which is spent in vain attempts to get the Juliet parts, met with cruel rebuffs on the score of age. Now, some of the old-man actors on the stage are quite young; they have chosen a particular line, conscious of the fact that nature has denied them the privilege of playing parts that will cause the stage-door-keeper to be deluged with amorous letters addressed to them, and aware, too, that the triumphs of the broad comedian will never be theirs. These young old-men are often quite as successful in old-man parts as those who have served most of a lifetime upon the stage. It is not more difficult for a young woman to play the old-woman character or the _grande-dame_ part than for the young man to tackle the Sir Peter Teazle or the ordinary modern old-man; nor is this the only class of work other than that of lovely heroine which lies open to the actress. When one hears discussion concerning the casting of plays there is often talk about the difficulty of finding an actress for a Fanny Brough part, which, of course, is quite distinct from what may be considered specifically a _soubrette_ character. Complaints are uttered about the difficulty of finding a player to represent the comic mother-in-law; indeed, playwrights are sometimes affected in their work by the fear that if they write broad comedy for feminine parts the difficulty of casting them will be insurmountable. Handsome salaries are paid to the few ladies who have a well-deserved reputation as actresses in the class of character thus indicated, and there is a demand for them--a demand generally supplied by superannuated leading ladies and aged _soubrettes_. It may be offensive to a girl's vanity deliberately to choose a path in which her personal charms, or those which she believes herself to possess, must be of little service. On the English stage it may be doubted if such a policy will ever be adopted, though on French there are instances which might be cited of actresses who have played dowager characters during the whole of a profitable, long and respected career.