for my love of the
old actors (whom he loves so much) went over it with me, supplying
to his capital collection, what alone the artist could not give
them--voice; and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd
and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding.
Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with ----; but I
am growing a coxcomb.

As I was about to say--at the desk of the then treasurer of the old
Bath theatre--not Diamond's--presented herself the little Barbara
S----.

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances. The father
had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the town. But his
practice from causes which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that
way to arraign--or perhaps from that pure infelicity which accompanies
some people in their walk through life, and which it is impossible to
lay at the door of imprudence--was now reduced to nothing. They were
in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew
and respected them in better days, took the little Barbara into his
company.

At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings were the sole
support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must throw
a veil over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to say, that her
Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their
only) meal of meat.

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, where in
her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to
Barbara!) some comic actor, who was for the night caterer for this
dainty--in the misguided humour of his part, threw over the dish
such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara!) that
when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged
sputteringly to reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part,
and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart
sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-fed
spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mercifully relieved her.

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before old
Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's payment.

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical people besides
herself say, of all men least calculated for a treasurer. He had no
head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, and
summing up at the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so
defic