that pert," said Mrs. Bracegirdle, with the air of one drawing
scientific distinctions. "Now, is that a boy or a lady that spoke to me
last?"

"By its dress, I should say a boy," said Cibber, with his glass; "by its
assurance, a lady!"

"There's one clever woman among ye; Peg something, plays Lothario, Lady
Betty Modish, and what not?"

"What! admire Woffington?" screamed Mrs. Clive; "why, she is the
greatest gabbler on the stage."

"I don't care," was the reply, "there's nature about the jade. Don't
contradict me," added she, with sudden fury; "a parcel of children."

"No, madam," said Clive humbly. "Mr. Cibber, will you try and prevail on
Mrs. Bracegirdle to favor us with a recitation?"

Cibber handed his cane with pomp to a small actor. Bracegirdle did the
same; and, striking the attitudes that had passed for heroic in their
day, they declaimed out of the "Rival Queens" two or three tirades,
which I graciously spare the reader of this tale. Their elocution was
neat and silvery; but not one bit like the way people speak in streets,
palaces, fields, roads and rooms. They had not made the grand discovery,
which Mr. A. Wigan on the stage, and every man of sense off it, has made
in our day and nation; namely, that the stage is a representation,
not of stage, but of life; and that an actor ought to speak and act in
imitation of human beings, not of speaking machines that have run and
creaked in a stage groove, with their eyes shut upon the world at large,
upon nature, upon truth, upon man, upon woman and upon child.

"This is slow," cried Cibber; "let us show these young people how ladies
and gentlemen moved fifty years ago, _dansons."_

A fiddler was caught, a beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of
"solemn dancing" done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned
it was beautiful; it was the dance of kings, the poetry of the courtly
saloon.

The retired actress, however, had frisker notions left in her. "This is
slow," cried she, and bade the fiddler play, "The wind that shakes the
barley," an ancient jig tune; this she danced to in a style that utterly
astounded the spectators.

She showed them what fun was; her feet and her stick were all echoes to
the mad strain; out went her heel behind, and, returning, drove her four
yards forward. She made unaccountable slants, and cut them all over in
turn if they did not jump for it. Roars of inextinguishable laughter
arose, it would have made an oyster merry.