tantly to
secure that immediate poor little five dollars a week rise! Signed and
went out to find, awaiting me in the letter-box, a better offer from Mr.
Lester Wallack.

And let me say right here that about the middle of the season I found
that some young actresses, who handed me cards on the stage, and in laced
caps and aprons appeared as maids in my service, were receiving for their
arduous duties a higher salary than I received as leading woman and their
play-mistress. "It's a strange world, my masters, a very strange world!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTH

I Go to the Sea-shore--The Search for a "Scar"--I Make a Study of
Insanity, and Meet with Success in "L'Article 47."

I had got safely through my first dreaded vacation. I had had two
wonderful weeks at the seaside, where, with Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis and
George Parkes, I had boarded with Mrs. By Baker, whom we left firmly
convinced of our general insanity--harmless, but quite hopeless cases she
thought us. Awed into reverent silence I had taken my first long look at
the ocean; that mighty monster, object of my day-dreams all the years,
lay that day outstretched, smiling, dimpling, blinking like the babe of
giants, basking in the sun.

I had inhaled with delight the briny coolness of its breath, and with my
friends had engaged in wild romps in its waves, all of us arrayed
meanwhile in bathing dresses of hideous aspect, made from gray flannel of
penitential color and scratchiness, and most malignant modesty of cut;
which were yet the eminently proper thing at that time.

I almost wonder, looking at the bathing dresses of to-day, that old
Ocean, who is a lover of beauty, did not dash the breath out of us, and
then fling us high and dry on the beach, where the sands might quickly
drift over our ugly shells and hide them from view.

All this happened, and much more, before I came to the play "L'Article
47," famous for its great French court scene, and for the madness of its
heroine. I am so utterly lacking in self-confidence that it was little
short of cruelty for Mr. Daly to tell me, as he did, that the fate of the
play hung upon that single scene; that the production would be expensive
and troublesome, and its success or failure lay absolutely in my hands.

I turned white as chalk, with sheer fright, and could scarcely force
myself to speak audibly, when asked if I could do the part.

I answered, slowly, that I thought it unfair for Mr. Daly first to