y mother, coming in from walking one
day, threw herself into a chair and burst into tears. She had been
evidently much depressed for some time past, and I was alarmed at her
distress, of which I begged her to tell me the cause. "Oh, it has come
at last," she answered; "our property is to be sold. I have seen that
fine building all covered with placards and bills of sale; the theater
must be closed, and I know not how many hundred poor people will be
turned adrift without employment!" I believed the theater employed
regularly seven hundred persons in all its different departments,
without reckoning the great number of what were called supernumeraries,
who were hired by the night at Christmas, Easter, and on all occasions
of any specially showy spectacle. Seized with a sort of terror, like the
Lady of Shallott, that "the curse had come upon me," I comforted my
mother with expressions of pity and affection, and, as soon as I left
her, wrote a most urgent entreaty to my father that he would allow me to
act for myself, and seek employment as a governess, so as to relieve him
at once at least of the burden of my maintenance. I brought this letter
to my mother, and begged her permission to send it, to which she
consented; but, as I afterward learned, she wrote by the same post to my
father, requesting him not to give a positive answer to my letter until
his return to town. The next day she asked me whether I seriously
thought I had any real talent for the stage. My school-day triumphs in
Racine's "Andromaque" were far enough behind me, and I could only
answer, with as much perplexity as good faith, that I had not the
slightest idea whether I had or not. She begged me to learn some part
and say it to her, that she might form some opinion of my power, and I
chose Shakespeare's Portia, then, as now, my ideal of a perfect
woman--the wise, witty woman, loving with all her soul and submitting
with all her heart to a man whom everybody but herself (who was the best
judge) would have judged her inferior; the laughter-loving,
light-hearted, true-hearted, deep-hearted woman, full of keen
perception, of active efficiency, of wisdom prompted by love, of
tenderest unselfishness, of generous magnanimity; noble, simple, humble,
pure; true, dutiful, religious, and full of fun; delightful above all
others, the woman of women. Having learned it by heart, I recited Portia
to my mother, whose only comment was, "There is hardly passion enough in
th