o leave off and go home. Ours is a very
strange trade, and I am sorry to say that every day increases my
distaste for it.... I do not think that during my father's life I
shall ever leave the stage; it is very selfish to feel regret at
this, I know, but it sometimes seems to me rather dreary to look
along my future years, and think that they will be devoted to labor
that I dislike and despise.... For many years--ever since I entered
upon my first girlhood, indeed--a quiet, lonely life upon a small
independence has been the aim of my desires and my notion of
happiness. Italy and the south of France formerly constantly
solicited my imagination, as offering pleasant places wherein to
build a solitary nest.... And now a cottage near Edinburgh, with an
income of two hundred a year, seems to me the most desirable of
earthly possessions; but, though this is certainly not a very wild
vision of wealth or magnificence, I fear it is quite as little
within my reach as southern palaces, or villas on the
Mediterranean.

My father has hitherto been able to lay by nothing, and my
assistance is absolutely necessary to him, ... and as long as I can
in any way serve my father's interests by remaining in my
profession I shall do so, and must naturally look forward to a
prolonged period of my present exertions. It is useless pondering
upon this, but I have been led to do so lately from a letter which
my father received from Mr. Bartley, the stage manager of Covent
Garden, the other day, which contained the plan of a new theatrical
speculation, in which he is most anxious to engage us. I know not
how my father feels upon this subject.... I, however, am well
determined that neither Mr. L----'s opinion, nor that of the whole
world besides, should induce me to own the value of a truss of
straw in any theater. My father's whole life has been given over to
trouble and anxiety in consequence of his proprietorship and
involvement in that ruinous concern, Covent Garden; and now, when
his remaining health and strength will no more than serve to lay up
the means of subsistence when health and strength are gone, the
idea of his loading himself with such a burden of bitterness as the
proprietorship of a new theater makes me perfectly miserable. For
my own part, I am determined