so utterly and hopelessly merciless to any man or woman as
one's heart may be.

Lilian comes back to consciousness on her deathbed. Her child had
returned to her only as a messenger from heaven, summoning her home. But
the message had been whispered in unconscious ears; for she had not seen
the little girl, who was removed before the mother had recovered from
her swoon. They dare not tell her now that Natalie is on this side of
the ocean and asleep in the next room. Mr. Strebelow had heard in a
distant land, travelling to distract his mind from the great sorrow of
his own life, of Lilian's condition, and he hastened back to undo the
wrong he felt that he had committed. She asks to see him; she kisses his
hand with tenderness and gratitude, when he tells her that Natalie shall
be her own hereafter; his manly tears are tears of repentance, mingled
with a now generous love. The stroke of death comes suddenly; they have
only a moment's time to arouse the little one from its sleep; but they
are not too late, and Lilian dies at last, a smile of perfect happiness
on her face, with her child in her arms.

The Mississippi darky, in Mark Twain's story, being told that his heroic
death on the field of battle would have made but little difference to
the nation at large, remarked, with deep philosophy; "It would have made
a great deal of difference to me, sah." The radical change made in the
story I have just related to you, before the production of the play in
New York, was this: Lilian lives, instead of dying, in the last act. It
would have made very little difference to the American nation what she
did; but it made a great deal of difference to her, as you will see,
and to the play also in nearly every part. My reasons for making the
change were based upon one of the most important principles of the
dramatic art, namely: A dramatist should deal, so far as possible, with
subjects of universal interest, instead of with such as appeal strongly
to a part of the public only. I do not mean that he may not appeal to
certain classes of people, and depend upon those classes for success;
but, just so far as he does this, he limits the possibilities of that
success. I have said that the love of offspring in woman has shown
itself the strongest of all human passions; and it is the most nearly
allied to the boundless love of Deity. But the one absolutely universal
passion of the race--which underlies all other passions--on which,
indeed, th