found so much to do! Little bits of business which, slight
in themselves, contributed to a definite result, and kept me always in
the picture.

Like all Ophelias before (and after) me, I went to the madhouse to study
wits astray. I was disheartened at first. There was no beauty, no
nature, no pity in most of the lunatics. Strange as it may sound, they
were too _theatrical_ to teach me anything. Then, just as I was going
away, I noticed a young girl gazing at the wall. I went between her and
the wall to see her face. It was quite vacant, but the body expressed
that she was waiting, waiting. Suddenly she threw up her hands and sped
across the room like a swallow. I never forgot it. She was very thin,
very pathetic, very young, and the movement was as poignant as it was
beautiful.

I saw another woman laugh with a face that had no gleam of laughter
anywhere--a face of pathetic and resigned grief.

My experiences convinced me that the actor must imagine first and
observe afterwards. It is no good observing life and bringing the result
to the stage without selection, without a definite idea. The idea must
come first, the realism afterwards.

Perhaps because I was nervous and irritable about my own part from
insufficient rehearsal, perhaps because his responsibility as lessee
weighed upon him, Henry Irving's Hamlet on the first night at the Lyceum
seemed to me less wonderful than it had been at Birmingham. At
rehearsals he had been the perfection of grace. On the night itself, he
dragged his leg and seemed stiff from self-consciousness. He asked me
later on if I thought the ill-natured criticism of his walk was in any
way justified, and if he really said "Gud" for "God," and the rest of
it. I said straight out that he _did_ say his vowels in a peculiar way,
and that he _did_ drag his leg.

I begged him to give up that dreadful, paralyzing waiting at the side
for his cue, and after a time he took my advice. He was never obstinate
in such matters. His one object was to _find out_, to _test_ suggestion,
and follow it if it stood his test.

He was very diplomatic when he meant to have his own way. He never
blustered or enforced or threatened. My first acquaintance with this
side of him was made over my dresser for Ophelia. He had heard that I
intended to wear black in the mad scene, and he intended me to wear
white. When he first mentioned the subject, I had no idea that there
would be any opposition. He spoke of my dress