truck by my own beauty. I grew quite
attached to the looking-glass which reflected that feather! Then
suddenly there came a change. _I began to see the whole thing._ My
attentive watching of other people began to bear fruit, and the labor
and perseverance, care and intelligence which had gone to make these
enormous productions dawned on my young mind. _One must see things for
oneself._ Up to this time I had loved acting because it was great fun,
but I had not loved the grind. After I began to rehearse Prince Arthur
in "King John," a part in which my sister Kate had already made a great
success six years earlier, I understood that if I did not work, I could
not act. And I wanted to work. I used to get up in the middle of the
night and watch my gestures in the glass. I used to try my voice and
bring it down and up in the right places. And all vanity fell away from
me. At the first rehearsals of "King John" I could not do anything
right. Mrs. Kean stormed at me, slapped me. I broke down and cried, and
then, with all the mortification and grief in my voice, managed to
express what Mrs. Kean wanted and what she could not teach me by doing
it herself.

"That's right, that's right!" she cried excitedly, "you've got it! Now
remember what you did with your voice, reproduce it, remember
everything, and do it!"

When the rehearsal was over, she gave me a vigorous kiss. "You've done
very well," she said. "That's what I want. You're a very tired little
girl. Now run home to bed." I shall never forget the relief of those
kind words after so much misery, and the little incident often comes
back to me now when I hear a young actress say, "I can't do it!" If only
she can cry with vexation, I feel sure that she will then be able to
make a good attempt at doing it!

There were oppositions and jealousies in the Keans' camp, as in most
theaters, but they were never brought to my notice until I played Prince
Arthur. Then I saw a great deal of Mr. Ryder, who was the Hubert of the
production, and discovered that there was some soreness between him and
his manager. Ryder was a very pugnacious man--an admirable actor, and in
appearance like an old tree that has been struck by lightning, or a
greenless, barren rock; and he was very strong in his likes and
dislikes, and in his manner of expressing them.

"D'ye suppose he engaged me for my powers as an actor?" he used to say
of Mr. Kean. "Not a bit of it! He engaged me for my d----d
archaeolog