Magdalens Apprenticeship

"She was back again among the strolling players when I first remember
her. It was not an unhappy time for me. I was the favorite pet and
plaything of the poor actors. They taught me to sing and to dance at
an age when other children are just beginning to learn to read. 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.