Fifty Years of an Actors Life Author:John Coleman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE MONASTERY, AND AFTER The Genesis Embryo—Quire Brothers and Lay Brothers—White Gowns, Brown Ones, and Wooden Shoes—Celibacy and Silence—Bed a... more »t Seven after Vespers—Up at Four for Matins—Doldrums and Dismal Dumps—Light—Light, and Sunshine in the Form of Father Tom—Brother Placid is Irascible and prongs a Heifer—Father Norbert's Proteges are not impressed with a Monastic Life—A Great Function—The Cardinal, the Bishop, and the Grace Dieu Contingent—Ambrose de Lisle of Coningsby—Brother Edmund, Brother Francis, and the Prior—Father Tom taken 111—I make love to the Cook at Grace Dieu, and break Tom's Fast—Shadows Darkling over the Old Home, and White Wings rustling in the Air—I return to say Good-bye to the Angel in the House—Behaved like a Ruffian, and am not ashamed of it!—" Home she's gone and ta'en her Wages"—The Battle of Life begins—The Bailiffs are put in, and the Household Gods put out—Mother's Friends befriend the Motherless Children—The Girls are sent to College —One of the Boys to Brixton, the Other to Sea, while the Intended Bishop becomes a Clerk in a Railway Office, and is dismissed for neglecting his Duties—He makes up his Mind to be an Actor—Runs away to London and modestly interviews Macready at Drury Lane, who wishes him Good Morning—Misses his Train at Rugby—Houseless, Homeless, Penniless—Sleeps under a Haystack in a Blinding Snowstorm—More Dead than Alive, is doctored back to Life. AT the height of our happiness a calamity befel our whole community. Our dear kind Father Challoner was stricken down with some mysterious but mortal malady, and taken from us almost at an hour's notice, without even so much as a last goodbye. This was a sad blow to all the congregation, but more especially to my mother, whose affliction was only too evident. In a...« less