The emotions of an author who for the first time sees himself in print, have often been descanted upon.  The sensations of a “super,” raised from the ranks, entrusted with the utterance of a few words, and enabled to read the entry of his own name in the playbills, are scarcely less entitled to sympathy.  His task may be slight enough, the measure of speech permitted him most limited; the reference to him in the programmes may simply run—­

    CHARLES (a waiter) Mr. JONES,

or even

    RAILWAY PORTER Mr. BROWN,

but the delight of the performer is infinite.  His promotion is indeed of a prodigious kind.  Hitherto but a lay-figure, he is now endowed with life.  He has become an actor!  The world is at length informed of his existence.  He has emerged from the crowd, and though it may be but for a moment, can assert his individuality.  He carries his part about with him everywhere—­it is but a slip of paper with one line of writing running across it.  He exhibits it boastfully to his friends.  He reads it again and again; recites it in every tone of voice he can command—­practises his elocutionary powers upon every possible occasion.  A Parisian figurant, advanced to the position of accessoire, was so elated that he is said to have expressed surprise that the people he met in the streets did not bow to him; that the sentinels on guard did not present arms as he passed.  His reverence for the author in whose play he is to appear is boundless; he regards him as a second Shakespeare, if not something more.  His devotion to the manager, who has given him the part, for a time approaches deliriousness.

“Our new play will be a great go!” a promoted “super” once observed to certain of his fellows, “I play a policeman!  I go on in the last scene, and handcuff Mr. Rant.  I have to say, ’Murder’s the charge!  Stand back!’ Won’t that fetch the house?”

There are soldiers doomed to perish in their first battle.  And there have been “supers” who have failed to justify their advancement, and, silenced for ever, have had to fall back into the ranks again.  The French stage has a story of a figurant who ruined at once a new tragedy and his own prospects by an unhappy lapsus linguae, the result of undue haste and nervous excitement.  He had but to cry aloud, in the crisis of the drama:  “Le roi se meurt!” He was perfect at rehearsal; he earned the applause even of the author.  A brilliant future, as he deemed, was open to him.  But at night he could only utter, in broken tones:  “Le meurt se roi!” and the tragic situation was dissolved in laughter.  So, in our own theatre, there is the established legend of Delpini, the Italian clown, who, charged to exclaim at a critical moment:  “Pluck them asunder!” could produce no more intelligible speech than “Massonder em plocket!” Much mirth in the house and dismay on the stage ensued.  But Delpini had gained his object.  He had become qualified as an actor to participate in the benefits of the Theatrical Fund.  As a mere pantomimist he was without a title.  But John Kemble had kindly furthered the claim of the foreign clown by entrusting him for once with “a speaking part.”  The tragedian, however, had been quite unprepared for the misadventure that was to result.