nse and recognition come
swift as lightning, sweet as nectar, while you are young enough to enjoy
and to make still greater efforts to improve and advance.

So it seems to me the great advantage of acting over work is one's
independence, one's opportunity to improve oneself. Its advantage over
the professions is that it is self-sustaining from the start. Its
advantage over the arts is its swift reward for earnest endeavour.

It must be very hard to endure the contempt so often bestowed upon the
woman who simply serves. I had a little taste of it once myself; and
though it was given me by accident, and apologies and laughter followed,
I remember quite well that even that tiny taste was distinctly
unpleasant--yes, and bitter. I was abroad with some very intimate
friends, and Mrs. P----, an invalid, owing to a mishap, was for some
days without a maid. We arrived in Paris hours behind time, late at
night, and went straight to our reserved rooms, seeing no one but some
sleepy servants.

Early next morning, going to my friends' apartments, I came upon this
piteous sight: Mrs. P----, who had a head of curly hair, was not only
without a maid, but also without the use of her right arm. The fame of
Charcot had brought her to Paris. Unless she breakfasted alone, which
she hated, her hair must be arranged. Behold, then, the emergency for
which her husband, Colonel P----, had, boldly not to say recklessly,
offered his services.

I can see them now. She, with clenched teeth of physical suffering and
uplifted eye of the forgiving martyr, sat in combing jacket before him;
and he, with the maid's white apron girt tight about him just beneath
his armpits, had on his soldierly face an expression of desperate
resolve that suggested the leading of a forlorn hope. A row of hair-pins
protruded sharply from between his tightly closed lips; a tortoise-shell
back-comb, dangling from one side of his full beard where he placed it
for safety, made this amateur hairdresser a disturbing sight both for
gods and men.

With legs well braced and far apart, his arms high lifted like outspread
wings, he wielded the comb after the manner of a man raking hay. For one
moment all my sympathy was for the shrinking woman; then, when
suddenly, in despite of the delicious morning coolness, a great drop of
perspiration splashed from the Colonel's corrugated brow, down into the
obstreperous curly mass he wrestled with, I pitied him, too, and
cried:--

"Oh, I