ready to say that the Americans did not like
Henry Irving as an actor, and that they only accepted him as a
manager--that he triumphed in New York as he had done in London, through
his lavish spectacular effects. This is all moonshine. Henry made his
first appearance in "The Bells," his second in "Charles I.," his third
in "Louis XI." By that time he had conquered, and without the aid of
anything at all notable in the mounting of the plays. It was not until
we did "The Merchant of Venice" that he gave the Americans anything of a
"production."

My first appearance in America in Shakespeare was as Portia, and I could
not help feeling pleased by my success. A few weeks later I played
Ophelia at Philadelphia. It is in Shakespeare that I have been best
liked in America, and I consider that Beatrice was the part about which
they were most enthusiastic.

During our first tour we visited in succession New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit,
and Toronto. To most of these places we paid return visits.

"To what do you attribute your success, Mr. Irving?"

"To my acting," was the simple reply.

We never had poor houses except in Baltimore and St. Louis. Our journey
to Baltimore was made in a blizzard. They were clearing the snow before
us all the way from New Jersey, and we took forty-two hours to reach
Baltimore! The bells of trains before us and behind us sounded very
alarming. We opened in Baltimore on Christmas day. The audience was
wretchedly small, but the poor things who were there had left their warm
firesides to drive or tramp through the slush of melting snow, and each
one who managed to reach the theater was worth a hundred on an ordinary
night.

At the hotel I put up holly and mistletoe, and produced from my trunks a
real Christmas pudding that my mother had made. We had it for supper,
and it was very good.

It never does to repeat an experiment. Next year at Pittsburg my little
son Teddy brought me out another pudding from England. For once we were
in an uncomfortable hotel, and the Christmas dinner was deplorable. It
began with _burned hare soup_.

"It seems to me," said Henry, "that we aren't going to get anything to
eat, but we'll make up for it by drinking!"

He had brought his own wine out with him from England, and the company
took him at his word and _did_ make up for it!

"Never mind!" I said, as the soup was followed by worse and worse.
"Ther