the
points of her fingers delicately, and divested the crime of half its
uncleanness and vulgarity--more an angel couldn't.

"Monstrous sensible woman, though!" whispered Quin to Clive.

"Hey, sir! what do you say, sir? for I'm a little deaf." (Not very to
praise, it seems.)

"That your judgment, madam, is equal to the reputation of your talent."

The words were hardly spoken before the old lady rose upright as a
tower. She then made an oblique preliminary sweep, and came down with
such a courtesy as the young had never seen.

James Quin, not to disgrace his generation, attempted a corresponding
bow, for which his figure and apoplectic tendency rendered him unfit;
and while he was transacting it, the graceful Cibber stepped gravely
up, and looked down and up the process with his glass, like a naturalist
inspecting some strange capriccio of an orang-outang. The gymnastics of
courtesy ended without back-falls--Cibber lowered his tone.

"You are right, Bracy. It is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent;
but his Othello, now, Bracy! be just--his Othello!"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried she; "I thought it was Desdemona's little
black boy come in without the tea-kettle."

Quin laughed uproariously.

"It made me laugh a deal more than Mr. Quin's Falstaff. Oh, dear! oh,
dear!"

"Falstaff, indeed! Snuff!" In the tone of a trumpet.

Quin secretly revoked his good opinion of this woman's sense.

"Madam," said the page, timidly, "if you would but favor us with a
specimen of the old style--"

"Well, child, why not? Only what makes you mumble like that? but they
all do it now, I see. Bless my soul! our words used to come out like
brandy-cherries; but now a sentence is like raspberry-jam, on the stage
and off."

Cibber chuckled.

"And why don't you men carry yourself like Cibber here?"

"Don't press that question," said Colley dryly.

"A monstrous poor actor, though," said the merciless old woman, in a
mock aside to the others; "only twenty shillings a week for half his
life;" and her shoulders went up to her ears--then she fell into a half
reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children,
we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to
sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was
writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them as we used?"

"In that respect," said the page, "we are not behind our
great-grandmothers."

"I call