ducks! Those ducks, marked "Kate Terry," were kept by mother for years
as a precious relic, and are, I hope, still in the family archives!

I stick to the mustard-pot, but I entirely disclaim the little Duke of
York in Richard III., which some one with a good memory stoutly insists
he saw me play before I made my first appearance as Mamilius. Except
for this abortive attempt at Glasgow, I was never on any stage even for
a rehearsal until 1856, at the Princess's Theater, when I appeared with
Charles Kean in "A Winter's Tale."

The man with the memory may have seen Kate as one of the Princes in the
Tower, but he never saw me with her. Kate was called up to London in
1852 to play Prince Arthur in Charles Kean's production of "King John,"
and after that she acted in all his plays, until he gave up management
in 1859. She had played Arthur during a stock season at Edinburgh, and
so well that some one sang her praises to Kean and advised him to engage
her. My mother took Kate to London, and I was left with my father in the
provinces for two years. I can't recall much about those two years
except sunsets and a great mass of shipping looming up against the sky.
The sunsets followed me about everywhere; the shipping was in Liverpool,
where father was engaged for a considerable time. He never ceased
teaching me to be useful, alert, and quick. Sometimes he hastened my
perceptive powers with a slipper, and always he corrected me if I
pronounced any word in a slipshod fashion. He himself was a beautiful
elocutionist, and if I now speak my language well it is in no small
degree due to my early training.

It was to his elocution that father owed his engagement with Macready,
of whom he always spoke in terms of the most affectionate admiration in
after years, and probably it did him a good turn again with Charles