f crabbed temper. I had asked Mr. Ellsler to make up my face
for me as an old and ugly woman. I wore corkscrew side curls and an awful
wrapper. I was a fearful object, and when Mr. Setchell first saw me he
stood silent a moment, then, after rubbing his stomach hard, and
grimacing, he took both my hands, exclaiming: "Oh, you hideous jewel! you
positively gave me a cramp at just sight of you! Go in, little girl, for
all you're worth! and do just what you please--you deserve the liberty
for that make-up!"

And goodness knows I took him at his word, and did anything that came
into my giddy head. Even then I possessed that curious sixth sense of the
born actress, and as a doctor with the aid of his stethoscope can hear
sounds of grim warning or of kindly promise, while there is but the
silence to the stander-by, so an actress, with that stethoscopic sixth
sense, detects even the _forming_ emotions of her audience, feeling
incipient dissatisfaction before it becomes open disapproval, or
thrilling at the intense stillness that ever precedes a burst of
approbation.

And that night, meeting with a tiny mishap, which seemed to amuse the
audience, I seized upon it, elaborating it to its limit, and making it my
own, after the manner of an experienced actor.

There was no elegant comedy of manners in the scene, understand, it was
just the broadest farce, and it consisted of the desperate effort of a
hen-pecked husband to assert himself and grasp the reins of home
government, which resolved itself at last into a scolding-match, in
which each tried to talk the other down--with what result you will know
without the telling.

The stage was set for a morning-room, with a table in the centre, spread
with breakfast for two; a chair at either side and, as it happened, a
footstool by mine. His high silk hat and some papers, also, were upon the
table. For some unexplainable cause the silk hat has always been
recognized, both by auditor and actor, as a legitimate object of
fun-making, so when I, absent-mindedly, dropped all my toast-crusts into
that shining receptacle, the audience expressed its approval in laughter,
and so started me on my downward way, for that was my own idea and not a
rehearsed one. When my husband mournfully asked if "There was not even
one hot biscuit to be had?" I deliberately tried each one with the back
of my knuckles, and remarking, "Yes, here is just one," which was the
correct line in the play, I took it myself