ul of all my leading men
was sent by a kind Providence to take tea with me to-day and talk
over the new play idea, and while he was here Dolores Tristeza
arrived in state and a taxi from the N.T. school, along with her
trunk and her temper and her temperament and Santa Catalina and
Jose-Maria. Utterly ignoring him, she launched upon a monologue of
her fancied wrongs, dramatizing every incident, impersonating every
one from the Principal to the taxi driver. I'd seen her through so
many of these Mad Scenes that it left me quite cold, but not so my
actor-man. When she had finished, spitting (dryly but venomously)
upon all schools, and flung herself out of the room, he sprang to his
feet.

"Good gad, Jane Vail,--don't you know what you've got here? A young
Nazimova! An infant Kalich! Schools--nonsense! Teach her the
A.B.C.'s--but don't touch that accent--and turn her loose on the
stage!"

Sarah, he's right. It's the thing, the only thing, to do with her. I
took her to see Nazimova to-night, and she sat star-eyed and hardly
breathing. When we came home I told her my new ideal for her and she
wept with joy. She swears by the green tail of Santa Catalina and
kisses up to God that she will never be wicked again, and she
believes it, and so do I, for I've touched her imagination at last.
I've been trying to keep a Bird of Paradise in a chicken coop! I'll
put her with the right people for training, and have her with me a
great deal, and not try to muss up her poor little mind with
mathematics.

She is lying sleepless and bright-eyed in her bed, and I must go in
to her now, to soothe her off to the Poppy Fields with happy plans
and prophesies.

_When_ are you coming?

JANE.

_July Eighth._

MY DEAR,

I float on a sea of rosy bliss. Randal's girl has almost promised to
marry him, and he's a new man, and Dolores is a lamb, dreaming of the
time she may begin her study for the stage, in the early fall.

We are to be married on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, and take
the night boat for Boston and thence to Maine, to Three Meadows. It
was M.D. who sent me there by scolding me into realization of my
grubbiness four years ago; I want to have my honeymoon there. The
Deacon and "Angerleek" have a little house which they rent, and they
are making it ready for u