at the ripe
age of seven years, to name her first child Genevieve, and she, to quote
her husband, "being a Roman Catholic as well as a little idiot,"
faithfully kept her vow, and our partnership's baby was loaded up with a
name that each year proved more unsuitable, for a more un-Genevieve-like
Genevieve never lived. All of which goes to prove how unwise it is to
assume family cares and duties before the arrival of the family.

Miss Lucille Western was playing an engagement in Cleveland when "our
baby" was a few months old. My friend and I were both her ardent
admirers. I don't know why it has arisen, this fashion to sneer more or
less openly at Miss Western's work. If a woman who charms the eye can
also thrill you, repel you, touch you to tears, provoke you to laughter
by her acting, she surely merits the term "great actress." Well, now, who
can deny that she did all these things? Why else did the people pack her
houses season after season? It was not her looks, for if the perfect and
unblemished beauty of her lovely sister Helen could not draw a big house,
what could you expect from the inspired irregularity of Lucille's face?
How alive she was! She was not quite tall enough for the amount of fine
firm flesh her frame then carried--but she laced, and she was grace
personified.

She was a born actress; she knew nothing else in all the world. There is
a certain tang of wildness in all things natural. Dear gods! Think what
the wild strawberry loses in cultivation! Half the fascination of the
adorable Jacqueminot rose comes from the wild scent of thorn and earth
plainly underlying the rose _attar_ above. And this actress, with all her
lack of polish, knew how to interpret a woman's heart, even if she missed
her best manner. For in all she did there was just a touch of
extravagance--a hint of lawless, unrestrained passion. There was
something tropical about her, she always suggested the scarlet tanager,
the jeweled dragon-fly, the pomegranate flower, or the scentless splendor
of our wild marshmallow.

In "Lucretia Borgia" she presented the most perfect picture of opulent,
insolent beauty that I ever saw, while her "Leah, the Forsaken" was
absolutely Hebraic; and in the first scene, where she was pursued and
brought to bay by the Christian mob, her attitude, as she silently eyed
her foes, her face filled both with wild terror and fierce contempt, was
a thing to thrill any audience, and always received hearty applause.