the manager, pleased with the novelty of the proposal, accepted it. Young Booth was but eighteen years old, and had not even studied the part, and it was a perilous thing to venture before an audience in a role in which one of his name had won such great fame. But he was confident of his own powers, and he had so often hung with delight upon his father's rendition of the part, that he needed but a hasty reference to the book to perfect him in the text. He won a decided triumph, and the public promptly acknowledged that he gave promise of being an unusually fine actor.
In 1852 Mr. Booth went to California, and engaged for the "utility business." He spent two years in careful and patient study in the humbler walks of his profession, learning its details, and doing much of the drudgery essential to a thorough knowledge of his art. In 1854, he went to Australia, and played a successful engagement there, stopping on his way at several of the Pacific islands. On his return, he played an engagement, with marked success, at the Sandwich Islands, and then went back to California.