de to please them. I felt quite
sorry this evening for poor Mr. Didear, to whom not the faintest
sign of encouragement was vouchsafed on his first coming on. This
is being cold to an unamiable degree, and seems to me both a want
of good feeling and good breeding. I acted as well as they would
let me. As for poor John Mason, concluding, I suppose, from their
frozen silence that he was flat and ineffective, he ranted and
roared, and pulled me about in the last scene, till I thought I
should have come to pieces in his hands, as the house-maids say of
what they break. I was dreadfully exhausted at the end of the play;
there is nothing so killing as an ineffectual appeal to sympathy,
and, as the Italians know, "ben servire e non gradire" is one of
the "tre cose da morire." ...

_Tuesday, 3d._--Went to the theater to rehearse.... In the evening
the house was good, and the play went off very well. I acted well,
in spite of my new dresses, which stuck out all round me
portentously, and almost filled the little stage. J---- L---- was
like a great pink bird, hopping about hither and thither, and
stopping to speak, as if it had been well tamed and taught. The
audience actually laughed and applauded, and I should think must
have gone home very much surprised and exhausted with the unwonted
exertion.

_Wednesday, 4th._--Went to the theater to rehearse "Francis I."
After I got home, my mother told me she had determined to leave us
on Saturday, and go back to London with Sally Siddons; and I am
most thankful for this resolution.... How sad it will be in that
strange land beyond the sea, among those strange people, to whom we
are nothing but strangers! But this is foolish weakness; it must
be; and what a world of strength lies in those two little words!...
At the theater the house was very good, and I played very well....

_Thursday, 5th._--After breakfast went to rehearse "The Gamester."
... In the evening the house was not good. My father acted
magnificently; I never played this part well, and am now gone off
in it, and play it worse than not well; besides, I cannot bully
that great, big man, Mr. Didear; it is manifestly absurd.

_Friday, 6th._--To the theater to rehearse "Francis I." On my
return found Mr. Liston and his little girl waiting to ride with