THE EXIGENCIES OF AN ACTOR'S CAREER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4916, 23 December 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EXIGENCIES OF AN ACTOR'S CAREER.

Edwin Booth, "the hope of the American stage," as a playbill of 20 years ago put it as a sequence to the then comparatively unfamiliar name, according to the Sari Francisco News Letter, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, November 5,1833, and is therefore just 42 years of age. He was the fourth son of his distinguished father, who was at that time in the very zenith of his fame. Edwin's first appearance took place at the Boston Museum, September 10, 1849, and from then till now his career has been a brilliant one—artistically, but not financially. The wonderful career of Mr. Booth since his first troublous days of early struggles is, indeed, as familiar as " household words" to the American public. It has also followed with affectionate interest his misfortunes anir mishaps in his grandly successful attempt to give tho country the finest and best appointed theatre. • In this enterprise he sunk the enormous sum of a million and a quarter of dollars—First, the fortuno possessed by_ him at the time, 250,000 dollars; money raised for the project and paid by the theatre receipts, over 400,000 dollars; the amount he should have received, but not drawn by him, in five years of acting in it, would aggregate, at his regular starring terms, 600,000 dollars more. All of this vast sum Mr.' Booth manfully paid away to the last cent., and he may be. said to be now startingin his financial life again. He has in tho past twenty years made more money than any. actor living or dead, and, we may add, disbursed it more unselfishly. In every sense,, as a representative genius, as a scholar, citizen, husband, and as a man, both in private and public life, Edwin Booth is an honor to. the stage he adorns, and a genuine sourco of un« mixed pride to tho American people.