play, and that's Hamlet!"

I did feel a fool. What a blundering donkey I had been not to see it
before! I was very thrifty in those days, and the thought of having been
the cause of needless expense worried me. So instead of the _crêpe de
Chine_ and miniver, which had been used for the black dress, I had for
the white dress Bolton sheeting and rabbit, and I believe it looked
better.

The incident, whether Henry was right or not, led me to see that,
although I knew more of art and archaeology in dress than he did, he had
a finer sense of what was right for the _scene_. After this he always
consulted me about the costumes, but if he said: "I want such and such a
scene to be kept dark and mysterious," I knew better than to try and
introduce pale-colored dresses into it.

Henry always had a fondness for "the old actor," and would engage him in
preference to the tyro any day. "I can trust them," he explained
briefly.

In the cast of "Hamlet" Mr. Forrester, Mr. Chippendale, and Tom Mead
worthily repaid the trust. Mead, in spite of a terrible excellence in
"Meadisms"--he substituted the most excruciatingly funny words for
Shakespeare's when his memory of the text failed--was a remarkable
actor. His voice as the Ghost was beautiful, and his appearance
splendid. With his deep-set eyes, hawklike nose, and clear brow, he
reminded me of the Rameses head in the British Museum.

We had young men in the cast, too. There was one very studious youth who
could never be caught loafing. He was always reading, or busy in the