Suddenly she stopped, and put
her hands to her sides, and soon after she gave a vehement cry of pain.

The laughter ceased.

She gave another cry of such agony that they were all round her in a
moment.

"Oh, help me, ladies," screamed the poor woman, in tones as feminine as
they were heart-rending and piteous. "Oh, my back! my loins! I suffer,
gentlemen," said the poor thing, faintly.

What was to be done? Mr. Vane offered his penknife to cut her laces.

"You shall cut my head off sooner," cried she, with sudden energy.
"Don't pity me," said she, sadly, "I don't deserve it;" then, lifting
her eyes, she exclaimed, with a sad air of self-reproach: "O vanity! do
you never leave a woman?"

"Nay, madam!" whimpered the page, who was a good-hearted girl; "'twas
your great complaisance for us, not vanity. Oh! oh! oh!" and she began
to blubber, to make matters better.

"No, my children," said the old lady, "'twas vanity. I wanted to show
you what an old 'oman could do; and I have humiliated myself, trying
to outshine younger folk. I am justly humiliated, as you see;" and she
began to cry a little.

"This is very painful," said Cibber.

Mrs. Bracegirdle now raised her eyes (they had set her in a chair), and
looking sweetly, tenderly and earnestly on her old companion, she said
to him, slowly, gently, but impressively "Colley, at threescore years
and ten this was ill done of us! You and I are here now--for what? to
cheer the young up the hill we mounted years ago. And, old friend, if we
detract from them we discourage them. A great sin in the old!"

"Every dog his day."

"We have had ours." Here she smiled, then, laying her hand tenderly
in the old man's, she added, with calm solemnity: "And now we must go
quietly toward our rest, and strut and fret no more the few last minutes
of life's fleeting hour."

How tame my cacotype of these words compared with what they were. I
am ashamed of them and myself, and the human craft of writing, which,
though commoner far, is so miserably behind the godlike art of speech:
_"Si ipsam audivisses!"_

These ink scratches, which, in the imperfection of language, we have
called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but
which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then
were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence always does,
every heart within reach of the imperial tongue.

The young loved her, and the old man, softened and van