At five years old I was in what is called 'the profession,' and had made my poor little reputation in booths at country fairs.

As early as that, Mr.
Holmcroft, I had begun to live under an assumed name--the prettiest name they could invent for me 'to look well in the bills.' It was sometimes a hard struggle for us, in bad seasons, to keep body and soul together.
Learning to sing and dance in public often meant learning to bear hunger and cold in private, when I was apprenticed to the stage.

And yet I have lived to look back on my days with the strolling players as the happiest days of my life! "I was ten years old when the first serious misfortune that I can remember fell upon me.

My mother died, worn out in the prime of her life.

And not long afterward the strolling company, brought to the end of its resources by a succession of bad seasons, was broken up.
"I was left on the world, a nameless, penniless outcast, with one fatal inheritance--God knows, I can speak of it without vanity, after what I have gone through!--the inheritance of my mother's beauty.
"My only friends were the poor starved-out players.