There are a few young men and young ladies in this world who do not take the same view of the stage that the Cahokian took: they imagine there is a great deal of fun in being an actor or an actress, and that it does not require any special effort to arrive at the point where a person becomes a full-fledged professional. In this they are just as much mistaken as was the Cahokian, and sometimes, after they have gone into training for the profession, they tire of the hard work as readily almost as the stage-struck young farmer tired of carrying the box of "gags." There is a general wild desire among the young people of this country to make players of themselves. They dream that the stage is something like a seventh heaven where there is nothing but music and singing and golden glory forever--admirers, wealth, and an uninterrupted good time generally. They do not know anything about the long and toilsome hours of work and the comparatively poor pay that form the portion of all who are not at the top of the dramatic ladder. They never pause to think if they are girls of the temptations into which they will be thrown, and of the slanders that will be uttered against their fair names upon the slightest provocation. All they see or know of theatrical life is its bright gilded side, the tinsel that looks valuable, the jewels that are paste, the silks and satins that are not what they seem, and the beautiful faces and bright smiles beneath which are wrinkles and toil-laden looks, when the actress is in her home plying her needle or studying the long lengths that belong to her part. It is because people are so ignorant of the realities of dramatic life that so many become stage-struck and go around striking tragic attitudes and rating imaginary scenery in a rabid rant through Othello's address to the Senate, or Hamlet's scene with his mother in the latter's chamber. There are forty thousand young ladies in this land who want to be Mary Andersons, and as many more who think they can kick as cutely as Lotta, while one hundred thousand semi-bald young men imagine they could out-Hamlet Booth if they had a chance, or lift the mantle of Forrest from John McCullough if the latter dared enter the ring with them. A Louisville newspaper reporter gave a very humorous description of an epidemic of this kind that prevailed in Mary Anderson's home city some time ago. "One half the girls of the city," said the writer, "are stage-struck!--stark, staring stage-struck. Hundreds of residences have been converted into amateur play-houses, where would-be female stars tear their hair, rave and split the air with their arms, and stalk majestically across imaginary stages to the imaginary music of imaginary orchestras, and amid burst of imaginary applause and showers of imaginary boquets. In the dry goods stores young ladies rush up to the counters with inspiration dropping from their eyes in great hunks and in hollow tones command the affrightened clerk to--