learned why she was unhappy; here she learned how alone she
could be happy; here she learned to know herself; and, the moment she
knew herself, she abhorred herself, and repented in dust and ashes.

This strong and straightforward character made no attempt to reconcile
two things that an average Christian would have continued to reconcile.
Her interest fell in a moment before her new sense of right. She flung
her profession from her like a poisonous weed.

Long before this, Mrs. Vane had begged her to leave the stage. She had
replied, that it was to her what wine is to weak stomachs. "But," added
she, "do not fear that I will ever crawl down hill, and unravel my own
reputation; nor will I ever do as I have seen others--stand groaning at
the wing, to go on giggling and come off gasping. No! the first night
the boards do not spring beneath my feet, and the pulse of the public
beat under my hand, I am gone! Next day, at rehearsal, instead
of Woffington, a note will come, to tell the manager that
henceforth Woffington is herself--at Twickenham, or Richmond, or
Harrow-on-the-Hill, far from his dust, his din, and his glare--quiet,
till God takes her. Amid grass, and flowers, and charitable deeds."

This day had not come. It was in the zenith of her charms and her fame
that she went home one night after a play, and never entered a theater,
by the front door or back door, again. She declined all leave-taking and
ceremony.

"When a publican shuts up shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he
does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I.
Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that
importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old
glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more guineas, and
the world loses in me, what? another old glove, full of words; half
of them idle, the rest wicked, untrue, silly, or impure. _Rougissons,
taisons-nous, et partons."_

She now changed her residence, and withdrew politely from her old
associates, courting two classes only, the good and the poor. She had
always supported her mother and sister; but now charity became her
system. The following is characteristic:

A gentleman who had greatly admired this dashing actress met one day, in
the suburbs, a lady in an old black silk gown and a gray shawl, with a
large basket on her arm. She showed him its contents--worsted stockings
of prodigious thickness--which she was c