should be more masked.

"Laura (Mrs. Taylor) absolutely hates the play. We both
thought--detestable in his part, false in emphasis, violent and coarse.
Generally the fault of the performance was, strange to say for that
theater, overacting, want of repose, point, and finish. With you in
essentials I was quite satisfied, but _quiet_--not so much movement of
arms and hands. Bear this in mind for improvement; and go over your part
to yourself with a view to it.

"The Allinghams have been here to-day. They saw you twice as Portia, and
were charmed. Mrs. Allingham wants to paint you. Allingham tells me that
Spedding is going to write an article on your Portia, and will include
Clara Douglas. I am going to see Salvini in 'Hamlet' to-morrow morning,
but I would call in Charlotte Street between one and two, on the chance
of seeing you and talking it over, and amplifying what I have said.

"Ever your true old friend,

"TOM TAYLOR."

A true old friend indeed he was! I have already tried to convey how much
I owed to him--how he stood by me and helped me in difficulties, and
said generously and unequivocally, at the time of my separation from my
first husband, that "the poor child was not to blame."

I was very fond of my own father, but in many ways Tom Taylor was more
of a father to me than my father in blood. Father was charming, but
Irish and irresponsible. I think he loved my sister Floss and me most
because we were the lawless ones of the family! It was not in his
temperament to give wise advice and counsel. Having bequeathed to me
light-heartedness and a sanguine disposition, and trained me splendidly
for my profession in childhood, he became in after years a very
cormorant for adulation of me!

"Duchess, you might have been anything!" was his favorite comment, when
I was not living up to his ideas of my position and attainments. And I
used to answer: "I've played my cards for what I want."

Years afterwards, when he and mother used to come to first nights at the
Lyceum, the grossest flattery of me after the performance was not good
enough for them.

"How proud you must be of her!" someone would say. "How well this part
suits her!"

"Yes," father would answer, in a sort of "is-that-all-you-have-to-say"
tone. "But she ought to play Rosalind!"

To him I owe the gaiety of temperament which has enabled me to dance
through the most harsh and desert passages of my life, just as he used
to make Kate and me dance alon