A Little Book of Western Verse | Page 6

for recitation, of which he was
always fond. Acting was his strongest boyish passion. Even as a child
he was a wonderful mimic and thereby the delight of his playmates and
the terror of his teachers. He organized a stock company among the
small boys of the village and gave performances in the barn of one of
the less scrupulous neighbors, but whether for pins or pennies memory
does not suggest. He assigned the parts and always reserved for himself
the eccentric character and the low comedy, caring nothing for the
heroic or the sentimental. One of the plays performed was Lester
Wallack's "Rosedale" with Eugene in the dual role of the low comedian
and the heavy villain. At this time also he delighted in monologues,
imitations of eccentric types, or what Mr. Sol. Smith Russell calls
"comics," a word which always amused Eugene and which he
frequently used. This fondness for parlor readings and private

theatricals he carried through college, remaining steadfast to the
"comics" until a few years ago, when he began to give public readings,
and discovered that he was capable of higher and more effective work.
It was in fact his versatility that made him the most accomplished and
the most popular author-entertainer in America. Before he went into
journalism the more sedate of his family connections were in constant
fear lest he should adopt the profession of the actor, and he held it over
them as a good-natured threat. On one occasion, failing to get a coveted
appropriation from the executor of the estate, he said calmly to the
worthy man: "Very well. I must have money for my living expenses. If
you cannot advance it to me out of the estate I shall be compelled to go
on the stage. But as I cannot keep my own name I have decided to
assume yours, and shall have lithographs struck off at once. They will
read, 'Tonight, M. L. Gray, Banjo and Specialty Artist.'" The
appropriation was immediately forthcoming.
It is in no sense depreciatory of my brother's attainments in life to say
that he gave no evidence of precocity in his studies in childhood. On
the contrary he was somewhat slow in development, though this was
due not so much to a lack of natural ability--he learned easily and
quickly when so disposed--as to a fondness for the hundred diversions
which occupy a wide-awake boy's time. He possessed a marked talent
for caricature, and not a small part of the study hours was devoted to
amusing pictures of his teachers, his playmates, and his pets. This habit
of drawing, which was wholly without instruction, he always preserved,
and it was his honest opinion, even at the height of his success in
authorship, that he would have been much greater as a caricaturist than
as a writer. Until he was thirty years of age he wrote a fair-sized legible
hand, but about that time he adopted the microscopic penmanship
which has been so widely reproduced, using for the purpose very
fine-pointed pens. With his manuscript he took the greatest pains, often
going to infinite trouble to illuminate his letters. Among his friends
these letters are held as curiosities of literature, hardly more for the
quaint sentiments expressed than for the queer designs in colored inks
which embellished them. He was specially fond of drawing weird elves
and gnomes, and would spend an hour or two decorating with these
comical figures a letter he had written in ten minutes. He was as

fastidious with the manuscript for the office as if it had been a
specimen copy for exhibition, and it was always understood that his
manuscript should be returned to him after it had passed through the
printers' hands. In this way all the original copies of his stories and
poems have been preserved, and those which he did not give to friends
as souvenirs have been bound for his children.
A taste for literary composition might not have passed, as doubtless it
did pass, so many years unnoticed, had he been deficient in other
talents, and had he devoted himself exclusively to writing. But as a boy
he was fond, though in a less degree than many boys, of athletic sports,
and his youthful desire for theatrical entertainments, pen caricaturing,
and dallying with his pets took up much of his time. Yet he often gave
way to a fondness for composition, and there is in the family
possession a sermon which he wrote before he was ten years of age, in
which he showed the results of those arduous Sabbath days in the old
Congregational meeting-house. And at one time, when yet very young,
he was at the head of a flourishing boys' paper, while at another, fresh
from the inspiration of a blood-curdling romance in