own play, his rage against "Madcap Violet" was very funny! "There am I,
just as you wrote it. My actions, manners, and clothes in the play are
all reproduced. You ought to feel pleased, not angry."

When his play "Victims" was being rehearsed at the Court Theater, an old
woman and old actress who had, I think, been in the preceding play was
not wanted. The day the management gave her her dismissal, she met
Taylor outside the theater, and poured out a long story of distress. She
had not a stocking to her foot, she owed her rent, she was starving.
Wouldn't Mr. Taylor tell the management what dismissal meant to her?
Wouldn't he get her taken back? Mr. Taylor would try, and Mr. Taylor
gave her fifteen pounds in the street then and there!

Mrs. Taylor wasn't surprised. She only wondered it wasn't thirty!

"Tom the Adapter" was the Terry dramatist for many years. Kate played in
many of the pieces which, some openly, some deviously, he brought into
the English stage from the French. When Kate married, my turn came, and
the interest that he had taken in my sister's talent he transferred in
part to me, although I don't think he ever thought me her equal. Floss
made her first appearance in the child's part in Taylor's play "A Sheep
in Wolf's Clothing," and Marion her first appearance as Ophelia in his
version of "Hamlet"--perhaps "perversion" would be an honester
description! Taylor introduced a "fool" who went about whacking people,
including the Prince, by way of brightening up the tragedy.

I never saw my sister's Ophelia, but I know it was a fine send-off for
her and that she must have looked lovely. Oh, what a pretty young girl
she was! Her golden-brown eyes exactly matched her hair, and she was the
winsomest thing imaginable! From the first she showed talent.