Alone, Clara Morris stood before the brilliant throng, vibrating to the spontaneous storm of enthusiasm, and as she stood before them the audience rose as one individual, carried out of themselves by an actress whose work was as rare as it was unique--work which never for one moment descended to mere stagecraft, but in its simplest gesture was throbbing with vital human emotion. As the curtain fell at last, while there was a busy hum of excited voices, the young person whose place on the New York stage was assured slipped into her dressing-room, scrambled into her clothes, and rushed from the theater, hurrying to carry the good news to the two who were eagerly awaiting her--her mother and her dog. "At last she saw the lighted windows that told her home was near. In a moment, through a tangle of hat, veil, and wriggling, welcoming dog, she cried: "'It's all right, mumsey--a success! Lots and lots of "calls," dear, and, oh, is there anything to eat? _I am so hungry!_' "So while the new actress's name was floating over many a restaurant supper its owner sat beneath one gas-jet, between mother and pet, eating a large piece of bread and a small piece of cheese, telling her small circle of admirers all about it, and winding up with the declaration, 'Mother, I believe the hearts are just the same, whether they beat against Western ribs or Eastern ribs!'" Then, supper over, she stumbled through the old-time 'Now I lay me,' and, adding some blurred words of gratitude, she says, "I fell asleep, knowing that through God's mercy and my own hard work I was the first Western actress who had ever been accepted by a New York audience, and as I drowsed off I murmured to myself: "'And I'll leave the door open, now that I have opened it--I'll leave it open for all the others.'" She did. Through that open door has passed a long procession from West to East since the day when the young woman from Cleveland brought New York to her feet by her unique ability and dramatic perception. A lover of literature from childhood, a writer of books in later days, Clara Morris moved on through the years of her brilliant dramatic career to a rare achievement, not led by the lure of the foot-lights or the flimsier forms of so-called dramatic art, but by the call of the highest. Well may the matinee girl of to-day, or the stage-struck young person who responds to the glitter and glare, the applause and the superficial charm of the theatrical world, listen to Miss Morris's story of "Life on the Stage," and realize that laurels only crown untiring effort, success only comes after patient labor, and great emotional actresses come to their own through the white heat of sacrifice, struggle, and supreme desire. ANNA DICKINSON: THE GIRL ORATOR