speeches of either character, the idea would have been abandoned. But as only six of Perdita's lines were sacrificed, I did not feel guilty of any vandalism in doing so. We produced the play for the first time in Nottingham, to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday. It proved a great success both with the people of that city and with the numerous Londoners who came especially to see it.

My surprise and disappointment may be imagined when, in the following September, it was not received with any marked enthusiasm on its first night in London. The cast was as follows:

Hermione (Queen to Leontes)

Perdita {(daughter to Leontes and Miss MARY ANDERSON.

Hermione)

(wife to Antigone)

Paulina

Emilia

(a Lady)

Mrs. JOHN BILLINGTON.
Miss HELEna Dacre.

Miss DESMOND.

I heard that many of the "first-nighters" voted it dull and heavy, and prophesied that it could not run for more than two weeks. My pet play looked very like a failure. But after that, "the actor's greatest judge "-the public-continued to fill the house nightly, and received it with increasing warmth. It kept the stage for a hundred and sixty-four nights; and had not my tenancy of the Lyceum then expired, it would probably have run on for another hundred. This was the only time in my experience that I acted the same play from the beginning to the end of a season.

In a letter about old times, that brilliant painter, and incomparable friend and host, Alma Tadema, mentions my farewell to the London stage. I cannot do better than let his graphic words describe it for me:

"Yes, those were good times of 'Galatea'

and The Winter's Tale,' and so many other

creations of yours. Especially do I like to linger on the souvenirs of 'The Winter's Tale,' and its last performance at the Lyceum, when you were so fully and enthusiastically engrossed with your rendering of Shakespeare that I distinctly heard you sing while dancing down in Perdita. The house called for a speech, and it did one good to see everybody so grateful for what you had given, and I shall never forget the moment when, after a few words of farewell, you hesitated, and tried to find a support on the curtain, when a voice from the gallery was heard saying, 'God bless you, Mary,' and immediately the hearty wish was reechoed by the whole theatre as if with one voice. Alas! you did not keep your promise, and never returned to the London stage, and reserved only to some chosen friends the happiness of meeting you, who must always be a bright star in their past."

CHAPTER XVII

AFTER SO much kindness from the public it seems ungrateful to confess that the practice of my art (not the study of it) had grown as time went on more and more distasteful to me. To quote Fanny Kemble on the same subject: "Never" (in my case for the last three years of my public life) "have I presented myself before an audience without a feeling of reluctance, or withdrawn from their presence without thinking the excitement I had undergone unwholesome, and the personal exhibition odious." To be conscious that one's person was a target for any who paid to make it one; to live for months at a time in one groove, with uncongenial surroundings, and in an atmosphere seldom penetrated by the sun and air; and to be continually repeating the same passions and thoughts in the same words -that was the most part of my daily life, and became so like slavery to me, that I resolved after one more season's work to cut myself

free from the stage fetters for ever. I was then beginning the tour in England, Ireland, and Scotland that brought my career as an actress to an end in Great Britain. This was in 1888. My last appearance on the Old World side of the ocean was in Dublin, where we were joined by Mr. and Mrs. William Black, and where for a frolic we inveigled the author of "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton" " upon the mimic scene. Once before, on his native heath, Scotland, we had induced him to appear as a mute masked guest in the ballroom scene of "Romeo and Juliet." On that occasion I remember he went to the theatre as soon as any of the actors, to dress for his part, though his costume consisted only of a domino and mask. When the scene opened, and he was discovered among a throng of guests, he was struck by a violent attack of stage fright that nailed him to the stage, and kept him there after the others had departed an unwilling witness of the tender glances of the Veronese lovers. Finally, Tybalt, without Shakespeare's permission, returned to the scene and led him off. In Dublin he was disguised as an ancient peasant in the "Winter's Tale," and the manner in which he strolled about