according to stage tradition. This part was entrusted to me in consequence of some indication of comic ability discovered by the manager in my acting. I was dissatisfied with the part; there was no name in the bill. The representative of the masses, and without a name, Citizen ...... Mr. Hill. Among his fellows, he was a man of mark; yet had Shakspeare passed his acts down to future times without a name. Returning to my dwelling after the performance, the crowd were praising Cooper's Marc Anthony. I was among the crowd, and heard their opinions. "How like h-,"-well, I can dispense with the simile-" Hill shouted, didn't he?" said a sailor to his mate. "Yes," said his companion. "What was the name of his part?" the first speaker inquired. "He didn't have any; he was only one of the citizens." The continuation of their conversation was lost, drowned in the different noises usually made by the occupants of the pit and galleries, when fairly let loose from the jaws of a full house, at the close of a performance given for the benefit of a popular actor.

I

"He didn't have any name," still rung in my ears. refreshed my inner man with a cold lunch, read over a small part I had to play on the following night, and retired to rest, the part without a name haunting me in my sleep. I determined from that moment to play parts with names, and if possible to do something, in my way, that should make my name remembered. I do not intend to anticipate the events or incidents of my journeyings as a player in my country or in foreign lands.

My intention is only in this, the beginning of my life, which may be presented hereafter to the public, to give a reason why my life should have been written by myself at all. In the first place, no one could be supposed

to be so well acquainted with my life as myself-who judge so well my motives or actions, which, judged by the common standard of motives, might do me no credit? My intentions were nothing but good; though the results were not, sometimes, the most fortunate for myself or others connected with me, in the actions consequent upon them.

What right have I, within the circle of temptations that beset poor human nature, to expect to be exempt from error, or the frailties inherent in man? None

If I know myself at all, I am too impulsive. Some good and some evil has followed this want of direction over myself. I wanted a name. I begin this life in the hope that my name will live after me; and that my children, in common with others who may read it, may profit by my doings, even if they have arrived at manhood's time before, in this form, it is made known to them. Is there vanity in this? Perhaps so; I can't help it. I am not the first player who has written his own life. Each one who has served up himself in this way may have had different motives-among them not the least, perhaps, was the desire to preserve to their name the fame acquired in the days of triumph.

Evanescent is his glory, who, upon the stage, is eminent? Reputation, like the kings raised by Hecate's incantations,

"Come like shadows. so depart."

Two lives are here to be noted---a natural life, which probably had its origin in the way all mortals originate. For this life I am in no way responsible.

My professional life and its accidents are the results of the exercise of free will, and if the first life has been

productive of anything useful, it is to the second, or professional life and its influences, that the good must be attributed. Colley Cibber wrote an apology for his life. I have no apology to make, as I consider the evil of my living lies at the door of the two respectable individuals who claimed me as their child for the first time on the eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord, 1809.

Whatever expectations had been entertained for me, or of me, previous to this time, I am unable to say. My first appearance on the stage of life was in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts.

I had the usual share of uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, grandfathers, and grandmothers.

My advent had been suggestive of certain ceremonies, all of which in due time had been performed under the auspices of proper directors.

I have understood that I never was large for my age, whatever that age might have been when the question of size came up for domestic discussion.

When "Little Hill" was called I answered, whether it was to receive my share of bread and butter, the usual Sunday dinner of baked beans and Indian pudding, or the birch for sundry indiscretions laid to my charge, and of which I was always innocent, but rarely took the trouble to deny. From absolute knowledge, I will not undertake a narrative of events previous to my fourth birth day.

I went out of long skirts into short skirts; left off nursing, and other habits connected with babyhood, at the time thought proper for young gentlemen of my age and character; cut my teeth, wore trowsers, went to bed without a light or a singing of "lullaby" from any of the female members of the family, under whose especial

care I was till my fourth birth day, an epoch I at this hour distinctly remember.

A friend of the family, to show his regard for that scion of the "Hill" tree which had been duly christened George, had purchased a silver spoon of large dimensions, considering it was to be used to feed the aforesaid George. Upon it was engraved, "George Handel Hill; given to him by a friend.”

Although I could not say that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I certainly at this time made good use of the spoon now mine by right. I remember how proud I was of "my" spoon, with "my name" on it. The little sins of human nature began to show themselves. "My spoon" was the cause of envy, jealousy, and other wicked passions, diluted, of course, to proper weakness to fill the bosoms of my cousins and playmates, causing quarrels, names-calling, and other juvenile mischiefs.

I have given the correct date of my birthday; and I trust some friend upon whom will devolve the duty of fixing a date to the finishing of my life, will be as particular. If I had made any great philosophical discovery, or immortalized myself by the invention of some useful aid to the art of navigation, or any of the arts or mysteries connected with the wants of the world, I undoubtedly should have deemed it necessary to have marked that day upon which said discovery or invention was made, that future discoverers or inventors might not infringe upon my right of priority, thus robbing me or my posterity of the fame due, in that case, their illustrious predecessor. During my life, both in my boyhood and manhood, there have been times when my sanguine impulses bid me onward, as the embryo idea of

some great invention was struggling for birth, nearly destroying the tabernacle in which my spirit of genius was resident by the throbs of mental labor incident to the great delivery.

The mountain and the mouse, allegorically applied to my case, was always the result of all my endeavors to travel on the road to fame; my exchequer filled with drafts upon the Bank of Hope, for road expenses, to be paid one day in good current coin out of the proceeds of my scientific lucubrations.

The fiend was ever at my elbow tempting me, saying, "You are genius mechanical; ponder, persevere and demonstrate." It was a foul fiend; and though never leaving the circle in which I moved, was jostled so often by the nymphs or the muses attend at the time upon my dramatic longings, that I did not become quite a monomaniac under the hallucination adverted to above.

Dates then may be considered out of the question. I have not kept a regular journal-a task often attempted and as often abandoned. Loose days and hours are embodied in loose memoranda. These, with the aid of memory, constitute the basis of this written life.

Among my first recollections, strongest of all is the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had become the terror of Europe, and many an American father and mother used the name of Boney to frighten the children to bed at early candle-light. I can vouch to this day for the fact as regards my parent. Little then did I think, as I shrunk beneath the quilt-my head under the pillow-at this name of terror, who was the cause of the same, and what were his deeds, whose threatened coming made each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porcupine." Boney is coming-alas,