On the Stage-And Off by Jerome K. Jerome — Read

N Saturday came the opening night, and with it my first appearance before the British public -- my "first deboo" as our perruquier called it. In thinking about it beforehand, I had been very much afraid lest I should be nervous; but strange to say, I never experienced stage-fright at any time. I say strange, because, at that period of my life at all events, I was -- as true greatness generally is -- of a modest and retiring disposition. In my very early youth, I believe, I was not so. I am told that in my frock and pinafore days, I used to stand upon the table, and recite poetry, to the intense gratification of my elderly relatives (ah, the old folks knew how to enjoy themselves, when I was a boy! ); and an old nurse of mine always insisted that on one occasion I collected half a crown in an omnibus by my spirited rendering of "Baa, baa, black sheep. " I have no recollection of this performance myself though, and, if it really did take place, where's the money? This part of the question has never, to my mind, been satisfactorily cleared up.

But however self-possessed I may have been at eight, I was anything but so at eighteen. Even now, I would not act to a drawing-room full of people for a thousand pounds -- supposing the company considered the effort worth that sum. But before a public audience, I was all right, and entirely free from that shyness about which, in private life, my lady friends so bitterly complain. I could not see the people for one thing -- at all events, not those beyond the third row of stalls. The blaze of light surrounding one on the stage, and the dimness of the rest of the house, give the audience a shadowy and ghost-like appearance, and make it impossible to see more than a general mass of white faces. As I never noticed the "hundreds upon hundreds of glaring eyes," they did not trouble me, and I let 'em glare. The most withering glance in the world won't crush a blind man.