Excerpt from Chestnuts and Small BeerThe craving Of the stage-struck is one Of the most unaccountable traits Of modern humanity. In nine hundred and fifty cases out Of a thousand the aspirants have no sort Of qualification for acting - they cannot even Speak the King's English correctly, and of the other fifty not half-a-dozen ever reach the beginnings Of distinction. They fancy they are potential Irvings, or Trees, or Ellen Terrys, and only the logic of hopeless struggle and bitter failure can cure their delusion. A child crying for the moon is not a more pitiable Object than a young man with stage aspirations and no aspirates.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.