THE STAGE-STRUCK GENTLEMAN.

Few amateurs of the drama have passed through their town lives, without having been, at some one period of their career, what is called stage struck, afflicted with a maniacal desire to make a "first appearance," to be designated in posters as a "Young Gentleman of this City," in connection with one Mr. Shakspeare, the "author of certain plays." The stage-struck youth is easily recognized by certain symptoms which manifest themselves at an early stage of the disorder. He is apt to pass his hand frequently through his "horrent locks," to frown darkly without any possible reason, and to look daggers at his landlady when invited to help himself to brown-bread toast. His voice, in imitation of the "Boy," the "Great American tragedian," alternates between the deep bass of a veteran porker and the mellifluous tenor of a "pig's whisper." He is apt to roll his eyes quickly from side to side, to gasp and heave his chest most unaccountably. He reads nothing of the papers but the theatrical advertisements and critiques. He has an acquaintance with two or three fourth-rate stock actors and a scene shifter, and is consequently "up" in any amount of professional information and slang, which he retails to every one he meets, without regard to the taste or time of his auditors. Have you seen the new drama of the Parricidal Oysterman? If you have, you must agree with him it is the greatest affair old Pel. has ever brought out; if you have not, you must submit to his contemptuous pity for your ignorance. For a person who passes his evenings in the society of books and friends, or in the country, the stage-struck gentleman has the most profound contempt. How one can live without nightly inhaling the odor of gas and orange peel, is to him a mystery inexplicable. He is aided and abetted in his practices by the sympathy and example of other stage-struck youths, all "foredoomed their fathers' soul to cross," all loathing their daily avocations for the time being, all spending their earnings, or borrowings, or stealings, on bits of pasteboard that admit them to their nightly banquet. The stage struck always copy the traits of the leading actor of the hour, whoever he may be, and grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter à la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an opera glass. There you may see the knit brows, the high shirt collars, the folded arms, the pursed-up lips, the hats drawn down over the eyes, that are the certain indications of the stage-struck Forrestians.

If, after the performance, fate and a designing oysterman place you in the next box to three or four of these geniuses, you will, unless very much of a philosopher, be disgusted, for the time being, with human nature. Their paltry imitations, their miserable brayings, their misquotations from Shakspeare, their mendacious accounts of interviews with the "Boy," will be enough to drive you mad. Some such thing as the following will occur:—

Waiter. Here are your oysters, gentlemen; ("a slight shade of irony in the emphasis.")

Stage-struck Youth, No. 1, (in a deep guttural tone.) "Let em come in—we're armed!"

Stage-struck Youth, No. 2, (to waiter.) "Red ruffian, retire!"

Stage-struck Youth, No. 3, (to Stage-struck Youth, No. 4.) "How are you now, Dick?"

Stage-struck Youth, No. 4. "Richard's himself again!"

O, Dii immortales! can these things be? In other words, can such animals exist?

It has been calculated by a celebrated mathematician, that out of every fourteen dozen of these stage-struck young gentlemen, one actually makes a first appearance. This event causes an enormous flutter in the circle of aspirants from which the promotion takes place. As the eventful night approaches, the most active and enterprising among them besiege the newspapers with elaborate puffs of their confrère, a column long, and are astonished and enraged that editors exclude them entirely, or exscissorize them to a dozen lines. Of what importance is the foreign news, in comparison with the first appearance of Bill Smithy in the arduous character of Hamlet? Has Colonel Greene no sympathy with struggling genius? Or is it the result of an infernal plot of the actors to put down competition, and sustain a professional monopoly?

The stage-struck young gentleman has passed through the fiery ordeal of "rehearsals," has been duly pushed and shaken into his "suit of sables," glittering with steel bugles, his hands have been adorned with black kids, his plumed hat rests upon his brow, his rapier dangles at his side. The curtain goes up and he is pushed upon the stage. His first appearance is the signal for a thundering round of generous applause, in which his faithful fellow-Forrestians are leading claquers. But the audience soon discover that he is a "guy" escaped from the surveillance an anxious mother. The stage-struck young gentleman is "goosed." Storms of hisses or bursts of ironical applause greet every sentence that he utters, and the curtain finally falls on his disgrace. This generally cures the disease of which we have been speaking. A night of agony, a week of pain, and the young gentleman, disenchanted and disenthralled, looks back upon his temporary mania with feelings of humiliation and surprise, cuts his aiders and abettors, and betakes himself seriously to the rational business of life.

But there are some stage-struck gentlemen whom nothing can convince of their total unfitness for the stage. You may hiss them night after night, you may present them with bouquets of carrots, and wreaths of cabbage leaves and onions, and leather medals, and services of tin plate; and if you find them "insensible to kindness," you may try brickbats—but in vain. They will cling to the stage for life—living, or rather starving, as attachés to some theatre, the signal for disturbance whenever they present themselves; detected by the lynx eyes of the public, whether disguised as Roman citizens or Neapolitan brigands, and severely punished for incompetency by heaped-up insult and abuse. These men live and die miserably; yet, doubtless, their lives are checkered with rays of hope; they regard themselves as martyrs, and die with the secret consciousness that they have "acted well their parts."