m, I began to forget myself; in
the following one, the balcony scene, I had done so, and, for aught I
knew, I was Juliet; the passion I was uttering sending hot waves of
blushes all over my neck and shoulders, while the poetry sounded like
music to me as I spoke it, with no consciousness of anything before me,
utterly transported into the imaginary existence of the play. After
this, I did not return into myself till all was over, and amid a
tumultuous storm of applause, congratulation, tears, embraces, and a
general joyous explosion of unutterable relief at the fortunate
termination of my attempt, we went home. And so my life was determined,
and I devoted myself to an avocation which I never liked or honored, and
about the very nature of which I have never been able to come to any
decided opinion. It is in vain that the undoubted specific gifts of
great actors and actresses suggest that all gifts are given for rightful
exercise, and not suppression; in vain that Shakespeare's plays urge
their imperative claim to the most perfect illustration they can receive
from histrionic interpretation: a _business_ which is incessant
excitement and factitious emotion seems to me unworthy of a man; a
business which is public exhibition, unworthy of a woman.

At four different periods of my life I have been constrained by
circumstances to maintain myself by the exercise of my dramatic faculty;
latterly, it is true, in a less painful and distasteful manner, by
reading, instead of acting. But though I have never, I trust, been
ungrateful for the power of thus helping myself and others, or forgetful
of the obligation I was under to do my appointed work conscientiously in
every respect, or unmindful of the precious good regard of so many kind
hearts that it has won for me; though I have never lost one iota of my
own intense delight in the act of rendering Shakespeare's creations; yet
neither have I ever presented myself before an audience without a
shrinking feeling of reluctance, or withdrawn from their presence
without thinking the excitement I had undergone unhealthy, and the
personal exhibition odious.

Nevertheless, I sat me down to supper that night with my poor, rejoicing
parents well content, God knows! with the issue of my trial; and still
better pleased with a lovely little Geneva watch, the first I had ever
possessed, all encrusted with gold work and jewels, which my father laid
by my plate and I immediately christened Romeo,