en I left the stage for the second time, and I
haven't made up my mind yet whether it was good or bad for me, as an
actress, to cease from practicing my craft for six years. Talma, the
great French actor, recommends long spells of rest, and says that
"perpetual indulgence in the excitement of impersonation dulls the
sympathy and impairs the imaginative faculty of the comedian." This is
very useful in my defense, yet I could find many examples which prove
the contrary. I could never imagine Henry Irving leaving the stage for
six months, let alone six years, and I don't think it would have been of
the slightest benefit to him. But he had not been on the stage as a
child.

If I was able to rest so long without rusting, it was, I am sure,
because I had been thoroughly trained in the technique of acting long
before I reached my twentieth year--an age at which most students are
just beginning to wrestle with elementary principles.

Of course, I did not argue in this way at the time! As I have said, I
had no intention of ever acting again when I left the Queen's Theater.
If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to
renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of
life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great
work--then I was never an artist. I have been happiest in my work when I
was working for some one else. I admire those impersonal people who care
for nothing outside their own ambition, yet I detest them at the same
time, and I have the simplest faith that absolute devotion to another
human being means the greatest _happiness_. That happiness was now mine.

I led a most unconventional life, and experienced exquisite delight from
the mere fact of being in the country. No one knows what "the country"
means until he or she has lived in it. "Then, if ever, come perfect
days."

What a sensation it was, too, to be untrammeled by time! Actors must
take care of themselves and their voices, husband their strength for the
evening work, and when it is over they are too tired to do anything! For
the first time I was able to put all my energies into living. Charles
Lamb says, I think, that when he left the East India House, he felt
embarrassed by the vast estates of time at his disposal, and wished that
he had a bailiff to manage them for him, but I knew no such
embarrassment.

I began gardening, "the purest of human pleasures"; I learned to cook,
and in time cook