h by the elopement and
marriage of James Lewis with Miss Frankie Hurlburt, a young lady from
private life in Cleveland, yet in all the years I served in that old
theatre, no real scandal ever smirched it.

True, one poor little ballet-girl fell from our ranks and was drawn into
that piteous army of women, who, with silk petticoats and painted cheeks,
seek joy in the bottom of the wine cup. Poor little soul! how we used to
lock the dressing-room door and lower our voices when we spoke of having
seen her.

I can never be grateful enough for having come under the influence of the
dear woman who watched over me that first season--Mrs. Bradshaw, one of
the most versatile, most earnest, most devoted actresses I ever saw, and
a good woman besides.

She had known sorrow, trouble, and loss. She was widowed, she had two
children to support unaided, but she made moan to no one. She worked
early and late; she rehearsed, studied, acted, mended, and made; for her
salary absolutely forbade the services of a dress-maker. She had two
gowns a year, one thick, one thin. She could not herself compute the age
of her bonnets, so often were they blocked over, or dyed and retrimmed.
Yet no better appearing woman ever entered a stage-door than this
excessively neat, well-groomed, though plainly clad, old actress.

It is not to be denied that a great many professional women are
absolutely without the sense of order. Their irregular hours, their
unsettled mode of life, camping out a few days in this hotel and then in
that in a measure explain it, but Mrs. Bradshaw set an example of neat
orderliness that was well worth following.

"I can't see," she used to say, "why an actress should be a slattern."

Then if anyone murmured: "Early rehearsals, great haste, you know!" she
would answer: "You know at night the hour of morning rehearsal--then get
up fifteen minutes earlier, and leave your room in order. Everything an
actress does is commented upon, and as she is more or less an object of
suspicion, her conduct should be even more rigidly correct than that of
other women." She had been a beauty in her youth, as her regular features
still proclaimed, and though her figure had become almost Falstaffian,
her graceful arm movements and the dignity of her carriage saved her from
being in the slightest degree grotesque. The secret of her smiling
contentment was her honest love for her work.

We had one taste in common--this experienced woman and my n