xclaimed, as at a wonder: "Its
hand! oh, its tiny, tiny hand!" Just with the very tip of her forefinger
she touched it, and "baby" promptly grasped the finger and gurgled
cordially. Her face flushed red, she gave a gasp: "Good God!" she cried,
"it's touching me, me! It _is_, see--_see_!" Sudden tears slipped down
her cheeks. "Blessed God!" she cried, "if you had but sent me such a one,
all would have been different! I could never bring disgrace or shame on a
precious thing like this!"

As she raised the tiny morsel of a hand to her lips the prompter sharply
called: "The stage waits, Miss Western!" and she was gone.

Poor, ill-guided, unhappy woman! it was always and only the stage that
waited Miss Western.

CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH

Mr. Charles W. Couldock--His Daughter Eliza and his Many Peculiarities.

There was one star who came to us every season with the regularity and
certainty of the equinoctial storm, and when they arrived together, as
they frequently did, we all felt the conjunction to be peculiarly
appropriate. He was neither young nor good-looking, yet no one could
truthfully assert that his engagements were lacking in interest--indeed,
some actors found him lively in the extreme. Charles W. Couldock was an
Englishman by birth, and had come to this country with the great Cushman.
He was a man of unquestionable integrity--honorable, truthful,
warm-hearted; but being of a naturally quick and irritable temper,
instead of trying to control it, he yielded himself up to every impulse
of vexation or annoyance, while with ever-growing violence he made
mountains out of mole-hills, and when he had just cause for anger he
burst into paroxysms of rage, even of ferocity, that, had they not been
half unconscious acting, must have landed him in a mad-house out of
consideration for the safety of others; while, worst of all, like too
many of his great nation, he was profane almost beyond belief; and
profanity, always painfully repellent and shocking, is doubly so when it
comes from the lips of one whose silvering hair shows his days have
already been long in the land of the God whom he is defying. And yet when
Mr. Couldock ceased to use plain, every-day oaths, and brought forth some
home-made ones, they were oaths of such intricate construction, such
grotesque termination, that they wrung a startled laugh from the most
unwilling lip.

In personal appearance he was the beau-ideal wealthy farmer. He was
squarely, sol