STAGE FRIGHT.

Evening Star, Issue 5991, 25 May 1882, Page 3

STAGE FRIGHT.

I went the other evening and caught Robert «L Burdctte in the ante-room at Chickering Hall just before going on the Btage with his funny lectures (writes a New York correspondent of the ' Indianopolis Journal.') "Ah!" he exclaimed, with a tremendous respiration. "Well, but lam glad you've come. Now, talk to me ; talk to me ;" and he continued walking up and dowa the floor, after shaking hands. "What is the matter? What ails you? What do you mean?" I said. "Are you rehearsing? Have I interrupted you? Do you want to be alone ?" "No ! no 1" he exclaimed eagerly, walking up to me. "Don't leave me. Don't go away." " What on earth is the matter?" I asked. "Seared!" he said, with a querulous laugh. Then I laughed. "You don't believe me. It's true, though, I'm afraid to go on the stage." "Pshaw, man!" I said, "why, you are joking; you have lectured for years." '«Yes—seventy-five times this winter; but it don't make any difference. I have to go j through this absurd experience every time. Thertfs no getting used to it." " How does it make you feel ?" " Feel ? Light as a cork ! If I was outside I could fly right over the building. Honestly and seriously, if I knew I had got to die to-night, I should pray that the Lord would take me just before I went on the Btage." '' Many have the same experience. That's some satisfaction," I suggested, "if misery loves company." "Yes," he said, "I told Beecher about myQtroubles, and he said ' I can tell you one thing for your consolation; you'll never get over it. I suffer every time I go before an audience, and am afraid of my own congregation.' But his experience doesn't give me much comfort."

«' Does your fear vanish when you get on the stage V' "No, it lasts some time, usually. I poke around among the audience for a familiar face, and when I find a friend I lecturo right at him and don't notice anybody else. Gough tells me that he does the same thing. He says he often finds himself talking to some sympathetic and responsive little group in one corner, telling his stories to them alone, as if they were in a little room together." He looked at his watch. " It's most time

to go on the stage. If it was respectable I'd run away. The notion of feigning sickness often conies over me as it ■'• over schoolboys who want to play hookey. Are you my gaoler?" looking up at a gentleman in a swallow-tail who seemed waiting for him.

" Yes; you have four minutes yet." ■ "Can't I get a reprieve?" asked the culprit, forcing a grim smile. "A T ot this evening. Any other evening. You remind me of Theodore Tilton. When he appeared here, though he had lectured 500 times, he was so frightened that we couldn't get him on the stage for a long time. The hall filled up, the audience clamored, and he, hesitating to face them, walked up and down tin's room, deaf to our entreaties, washing his lunula with_ 'invisible soap in imperceptible water.' Finally we got him through that door at half-past eight." I told Burdette that Wendell Phillips assured me once that he had had similar experience; then I slipped around into the orchestra. The funny man came on the stage, began in a tremulous voice, and his troubled eye wandered over the audience till he found friends, with whom he quietly settled down and made himself at home.