ture
Characters" (a book in which I was then deeply interested) the chapters
relating to St. Peter and Jacob. I do not know whether the nervous
tension which I must have been enduring strengthened the impression made
upon me by what I read, but I remember being quite absorbed by it, which
I think was curious, because certainly such subjects of meditation were
hardly allied to the painful undertaking so immediately pressing upon
me. But I believe I felt imperatively the necessity of moderating my own
strong nervous emotion and excitement by the fulfillment of my
accustomed duties and pursuits, and above all by withdrawing my mind
into higher and serener regions of thought, as a respite and relief from
the pressure of my alternate apprehensions of failure and hopes of
success. I do not mean that it was at all a matter of deliberate
calculation or reflection, but rather an instinct of self-preservation,
which actuated me: a powerful instinct which has struggled and partially
prevailed throughout my whole life against the irregular and passionate
vehemence of my temperament, and which, in spite of a constant tendency
to violent excitement of mind and feeling, has made me a person of
unusually systematic pursuits and monotonous habits, and been a frequent
subject of astonishment, not unmixed with ridicule, to my friends, who
have not known as well as myself what wholesomeness there was in the
method of my madness. And I am persuaded that religion and reason alike
justify such a strong instinctive action in natures which derive a
constant moral support, like that of the unobserved but all-sustaining
pressure of the atmosphere, from the soothing and restraining influence
of systematic habits of monotonous regularity. Amid infinite anguish and
errors, existence may preserve a species of outward symmetry and harmony
from this strong band of minute observance keeping down and assisting
the mind to master elements of moral and mental discord and disorder,
for the due control of which the daily and hourly subjection to
recurring rules is an invaluable auxiliary to higher influences. The
external practice does not supply but powerfully supplements the
internal principle of self-control.

My mother, who had left the stage for upward of twenty years, determined
to return to it on the night of my first appearance, that I might have
the comfort and support of her being with me in my trial. We drove to
the theater very early, indeed whil