hought my attention would be
distracted from my business, and where I might occasionally meet with
undesirable associates. My salary was fixed at thirty guineas a week,
and the Saturday after I came out I presented myself for the first and
last time at the treasury of the theater to receive it, and carried it,
clinking, with great triumph, to my mother, the first money I ever
earned.

It would be difficult to imagine anything more radical than the change
which three weeks had made in the aspect of my whole life. From an
insignificant school-girl, I had suddenly become an object of general
public interest. I was a little lion in society, and the town talk of
the day. Approbation, admiration, adulation, were showered upon me;
every condition of my life had been altered, as by the wand of a fairy.
Instead of the twenty pounds a year which my poor father squeezed out of
his hard-earned income for my allowance, out of which I bought (alas,
with how much difficulty, seeing how many other things I would buy!) my
gloves and shoes, I now had an assured income, as long as my health and
faculties were unimpaired, of at least a thousand a year; and the thirty
guineas a week at Covent Garden, and much larger remuneration during
provincial tours, forever forbade the sense of destitution productive of
the ecstasy with which, only a short time before I came out, I had found
wedged into the bottom of my money drawer in my desk a sovereign that I
had overlooked, and so had sorrowfully concluded myself penniless till
next allowance day. Instead of trudging long distances afoot through the
muddy London streets, when the hire of a hackney-coach was matter of
serious consideration, I had a comfortable and elegant carriage; I was
allowed, at my own earnest request, to take riding lessons, and before
long had a charming horse of my own, and was able to afford the delight
of giving my father one, the use of which I hoped would help to
invigorate and refresh him. The faded, threadbare, turned, and dyed
frocks which were my habitual wear were exchanged for fashionably made
dresses of fresh colors and fine texture, in which I appeared to myself
transfigured. Our door was besieged with visitors, our evenings bespoken
by innumerable invitations; social civilities and courtesies poured in
upon us from every side in an incessant stream; I was sought and petted
and caressed by persons of conventional and real distinction, and every
night that I did not