gold, violet and primrose, and all those magic colors that have no
names, had faded into the dark, there were other fires for me to see.
The flaming forges came out, and terrified while they fascinated my
childish imagination.

What did it matter to me that I was locked in and that my father and
mother, with my elder sister Kate, were all at the theater? I had the
sunset, the forges, and the oak bureau.

I cannot say how old I was at this time, but I am sure that it wasn't
long after my birth (which I can't remember, although I have often been
asked to decide in which house at Coventry I was born!). At any rate, I
had not then seen a theater, and I took to the stage before many years
had passed over my head.

Putting together what I remembered, and such authentic history as there
is of my parents' movements, I gather that this attic was in theatrical
lodgings in Glasgow. My father was an actor, my mother an actress, and
they were at this time on tour in Scotland. Perhaps this is the place to
say that father was the son of an Irish builder, and that he eloped in a
chaise with mother, who was the daughter of a Scottish minister. I am
afraid I know no details of their romance. As for my less immediate
ancestry, it is "wropt in mystery." Were we all people of the stage?
There was a Daniel Terry who was not only a famous actor in his day, but
a friend of Sir Walter Scott's. There was an Eliza Terry, an actress
whose portrait appears in _The Dramatic Mirror_ in 1847. But so far as I
know I cannot claim kinship with either Eliza or Daniel.

I have a very dim recollection of anything that happened in the attic,
beyond the fact that when my father and mother went to the theater every