He was then offered twelve dollars a week if he would learn to walk the slack wire. He accepted and joined "Bob Carter's Dog Show," which traveled on a canal boat. When it was necessary Mr. Russell joined the mules in hauling the craft. His next engagement was at John Bates's National Theatre in Cincinnati, where he sang between the acts, and after that he was a stock actor and a singer in Deagle's Theatre, St. Louis. Then he played in Milwaukee, later becoming connected with the Peake Family Bell Ringers, who followed the army into Arkansas and Tennessee. During the season of 1864–65 Mr. Russell was second comedian in the Nashville Theatre, where Laura Keene and Maggie Mitchell also played, and the following season he was at Ben DeBar's Theatre, St. Louis, with Lawrence Barrett. The fall of 1866 found him visiting some small Western towns and experiencing every variety of hard luck. "Perhaps you'd like to have me tell you of my walk of thirty-six miles on a given occasion, with my wardrobe, tied up in a yellow handkerchief, under my arm," Mr. Russell remarked; "of my offering to give an entertainment, single-handed and alone, in a town,—one of the small towns of the region,—for which exhibition of my talents the boys of the place drove me into the river and pummeled me to their evident delight and satisfaction; of my subsisting for three days on one chicken ; of my arriving at the little town of Meredosia, Illinois, where there was no printing-office; of my taking one old handbill from my bundle, and, procuring a bell, going about the village and arousing the inhabitants, taking my bill from house to house, from store to store, and showing my program, and then, when evening came, exhibiting my abilities and talents to a house' whose receipts brought me, all told, exactly sixty-five cents! But after all this was a good house for me at that particular time.