This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones.

This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably.

He disappeared, and presently turned up in St.Louis.
I ran across him there, by and by.

He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining himself to be Othello or some such character, and imagining that the passing crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds, but did not succeed.

However, he casually informed me, presently, that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with indifference, but the indifference was thin, and a mighty exultation showed through it.