ery eye was turned on this newcomer--that
Roxana for whom Mr. Cibber's story had prepared a peculiar interest.
She was dressed in a rich green velvet gown with gold fringe. Cibber
remembered it; she had played the "Eastern Queen" in it. Heaven forgive
all concerned! It was fearfully pinched in at the waist and ribs, so as
to give the idea of wood inside, not woman.

Her hair and eyebrows were iron-gray, and she had lost a front tooth, or
she would still have been eminently handsome. She was tall and straight
as a dart, and her noble port betrayed none of the weakness of age, only
it was to be seen that her hands were a little weak, and the gold-headed
crutch struck the ground rather sharply, as if it did a little
limbs'-duty.

Such was the lady who marched into the middle of the room, with a "How
do, Colley?" and, looking over the company's heads as if she did not see
them, regarded the four walls with some interest. Like a cat, she seemed
to think more of places than of folk. The page obsequiously offered her
a chair.

"Not so clean as it used to be," said Mrs. Bracegirdle.

Unfortunately, in making this remark, the old lady graciously patted the
page's head for offering her the chair; and this action gave, with some
of the ill-constituted minds that are ever on the titter, a ridiculous
direction to a remark intended, I believe, for the paint and wanscots,
etc.

"Nothing is as it used to be," remarked Mr. Cibber.

"All the better for everything," said Mrs. Clive.

"We were laughing at this mighty little David, first actor of this
mighty little age."

Now if Mr. Cibber thought to find in the newcomer an ally of the past
in its indiscriminate attack upon the present, he was much mistaken; for
the old actress made onslaught on this nonsense at once.

"Ay, ay," said she, "and not the first time by many hundreds. 'Tis
a disease you have. Cure yourself, Colley. Davy Garrick pleases the
public; and in trifles like acting, that take nobody to heaven, to
please all the world, is to be great. Some pretend to higher aims, but
none have 'em. You may hide this from young fools, mayhap, but not from
an old 'oman like me. He! he! he! No, no, no--not from an old 'oman like
me."

She then turned round in her chair, and with that sudden, unaccountable
snappishness of tone to which the brisk old are subject, she snarled:
"Gie me a pinch of snuff, some of ye, do!"

Tobacco dust was instantly at her disposal. She took it with