aginary improprieties. Tittering shyness, all
giggle-goggle and blush; stony and stolid stupidity, impenetrable to a
ray of perception; awkward, angular postures and gestures, and jerking
saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish
frolics and friskings; sharp, shrill little whinnying squeals and
squeaks, followed by lengthened, sepulchral "O-h's"--all formed together
such an irresistibly ludicrous picture as made "Les Anglaises pour Rire"
of Poitier and Brunet one of the most comical pieces of acting I have
seen in all my life.

Mrs. Rowden's establishment in Hans Place had been famous for occasional
dramatic representations by the pupils; and though she had become in her
Paris days what in the religious jargon of that day was called serious,
or even methodistical, she winked at, if she did not absolutely
encourage, sundry attempts of a similar sort which her Paris pupils got
up.

Once it was a vaudeville composed expressly in honor of her birthday by
the French master, in which I had to sing, with reference to her, the
following touching tribute, to a well-known vaudeville tune:

"C'est une mere!
Qui a les premiers droits sur nos coeurs?
Qui partage, d'une ardeur sincere,
Et nos plaisirs et nos douleurs?
C'est une mere!"

I suppose this trumpery was stamped upon my brain by the infinite
difficulty I had in delivering it gracefully, with all the point and all
the pathos the author assured me it contained, at Mrs. Rowden,
surrounded by her friends and guests, and not suggesting to me the
remotest idea of _my_ mother or any body else's mother.

After this we got up Madame de Genlis' little piece of "L' Isle
Heureuse," in which I acted the accomplished and conceited princess who
is so judiciously rejected by the wise and ancient men of the island, in
spite of the several foreign tongues she speaks fluently, in favor of
the tender-hearted young lady who, in defiance of all sound systems of
political and social economy, always walks about attended by the poor of
the island in a body, to whom she distributes food and clothes in a
perpetual stream of charity, and whose prayers and blessings lift her
very properly to the throne, while the other young woman is left talking
to all the ambassadors in all their different languages at once.

Our next dramatic attempt came to a disastrous and premature end. I do
not know who suggested to us the witty and clever little play of