im recite the balcony scene with the most indescribable mixture
of shy terror and nervous convulsions of suppressed giggling, my father
threw down the book, and Henry gave vent to his feelings by clapping his
elbows against his sides and bursting into a series of triumphant
cock-crows--an expression of mental relief so ludicrously in contrast
with his sweet, sentimental face, and the part he had just been
pretending to assume, that I thought we never should have recovered from
the fits it sent us into. We were literally all crying with laughter,
and a more farcical scene cannot be imagined. This, of course, ended all
idea of that young chanticleer being my Romeo; and yet the young rascal
was, or fancied he was, over head and ears in love at this very time,
and an exquisite sketch Hayter had just made of him might with the
utmost propriety have been sent to the exhibition with no other title
than "Portrait of a Lover."

The part of Romeo was given to Mr. Abbot, an old-established favorite
with the public, a very amiable and worthy man, old enough to have been
my father, whose performance, not certainly of the highest order, was
nevertheless not below inoffensive mediocrity. But the public, who were
bent upon doing more than justice to me, were less than just to him; and
the abuse showered upon his Romeo, especially by my more enthusiastic
admirers of the male sex, might, I should think, have embittered his
stage relations with me to the point of making me an object of
detestation to him, all through our theatrical lives. A tragicomic
incident was related to me by one of the parties concerned in it, which
certainly proved that poor Mr. Abbot was quite aware of the little favor
his Romeo found with my particular friends. One of them, the son of our
kind and valued friends the G----s, an excellent, good-hearted, but not
very wise young fellow, invariably occupied a certain favorite and
favorable position in the midst of the third row of the pit every night
that I acted. There were no stalls or reserved seats then, though not
long after I came out the majority of the seats in the orchestra were
let to spectators, and generally occupied by a set of young gentlemen
whom Sir Thomas Lawrence always designated as my "body guard." This,
however, had not yet been instituted, and my friend G---- had often to
wait long hours, and even to fight for the privilege of his peculiar
seat, where he rendered himself, I am sorry to say, not a