" His
non-resentment was but an evidence of his good nature, for he was aware
that it was not a very general custom of actors to give each other
nicknames, and that his case was an exception.
When he was playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of a
New York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came to
know Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more to do in
the play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some papers on a
desk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light. Bridges was doing
the role of the bank clerk in love with the banker's daughter. Yorick and
Bridges, through some set of circumstances or other, were sharers of the
same dressing-room.
Upon a certain Wednesday, and after a matinee, the two were in their
dressing-room, hastily washing up their faces and putting on their street
clothes. Said the old man:
"Did you notice the pretty little girl in the upper box? She reminds me
of--" here his voice fell and took on suddenly a tone of sadness--"of some
one I knew once, long ago."
Bridges, drying his face with a towel before the big mirror, did not
observe the old man's change of voice, nor did he heed the last part of the
sentence.
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