fresh Jerrold boy
and had been nettled by his remark. Possibly in her indignation she
had said what first came into her mind, though it didn't seem like her.
Miss Pritchard sighed, for she had worshipped at the shrine of truth
all her life, and strive as she would, she couldn't but feel a
deviation from Elsie's wonted frankness here.

She pondered much upon the subject and later in the summer--on the
evening preceding their return to New York, it was--as they were
talking about Elsie's studying, Miss Pritchard suddenly became serious.

"Elsie, there's something I want to say to you as an older woman to a
young girl," she began. "You will have one difficulty to contend with
that I had in newspaper work, only in your case the temptation will be
greater, and your task correspondingly harder. There's a poem of a
child-actor of Queen Elizabeth's time, little Salathiel Pavy, who
constantly played the part of an old man. The verses relate that he
acted the part so naturally that the fates mistook him for an old man
and cut off his thread of life in his tender years. Now you, Elsie
dear, concerned with make-believe--fiction--as you will constantly be
in your study for the stage, eager, of course, to use every moment and
occasion, with one subject dominating your thoughts, will need to be
very, very careful with regard to your separate, personal life. In
other words, in good old-fashioned terms, you'll have to guard your
soul. Keep that good and pure and true. Keep that sacred, above and
apart from your work, and then whether you are ever a great actress or
not, you will be a good woman."

And then half shyly, but beautifully, she repeated Matthew Arnold's
"Palladium":

"Set where the upper streams of Simois flow,
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium far below,
And fought and saw it not, but there it stood.

It stood and sun and moonshine rained their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight
Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So in its lovely moonlight lives the soul.
Mountains surround it and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll:
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

Men will renew the battle on the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust