e the late autumn sunlight yet
lingered in the sky; it shone into the carriage, upon me, and as I
screened my eyes from it, my mother said, "Heaven smiles on you, my
child." My poor mother went to her dressing-room to get herself ready,
and did not return to me for fear of increasing my agitation by her own.
My dear aunt Dall and my maid and the theater dresser performed my
toilet for me, and at length I was placed in a chair, with my satin
train carefully laid over the back of it; and there I sat, ready for
execution, with the palms of my hands pressed convulsively together, and
the tears I in vain endeavored to repress welling up into my eyes and
brimming slowly over, down my rouged cheeks--upon which my aunt, with a
smile full of pity, renewed the color as often as these heavy drops made
unsightly streaks in it. Once and again my father came to the door, and
I heard his anxious "How is she?" to which my aunt answered, sending him
away with words of comforting cheer. At last, "Miss Kemble called for
the stage, ma'am!" accompanied with a brisk tap at the door, started me
upright on my feet, and I was led round to the side scene opposite to
the one from which I saw my mother advance on the stage; and while the
uproar of her reception filled me with terror, dear old Mrs. Davenport,
my nurse, and dear Mr. Keely, her Peter, and half the _dramatis personae_
of the play (but not my father, who had retreated, quite unable to
endure the scene) stood round me as I lay, all but insensible, in my
aunt's arms. "Courage, courage, dear child! poor thing, poor thing!"
reiterated Mrs. Davenport. "Never mind 'em, Miss Kemble!" urged Keely,
in that irresistibly comical, nervous, lachrymose voice of his, which I
have never since heard without a thrill of anything but comical
association; "never mind 'em! don't think of 'em, any more than if they
were so many rows of cabbages!" "Nurse!" called my mother, and on
waddled Mrs. Davenport, and, turning back, called in her turn, "Juliet!"
My aunt gave me an impulse forward, and I ran straight across the stage,
stunned with the tremendous shout that greeted me, my eyes covered with
mist, and the green baize flooring of the stage feeling as if it rose up
against my feet; but I got hold of my mother, and stood like a terrified
creature at bay, confronting the huge theater full of gazing human
beings. I do not think a word I uttered during this scene could have
been audible; in the next, the ball-roo