your art. You are the one young actress of my day who can have her
success entirely in her own hands. You have all the gifts for your
noble profession, and, as you know, your own devotion to it will give
you all that can be learned. I'm very glad my stage direction was useful
and pleasant to you, and any benefit you have derived from it is
overpaid by your style of acting. You cannot have a 'groove'; you are
too much of an artist. Go on and prosper, and if at any time you think I
can help you in your art, you may always count on that help from your
most sincere well-wisher

"LEONORA WIGAN."

Another service that Mrs. Wigan did me was to cure me of "fooling" on
the stage. "_Did_ she?" I thought I heard some one interrupt me unkindly
at that point! Well, at any rate, she gave me a good fright one night,
and I never forgot it, though I will not say I never laughed again. I
think it was in "The Double Marriage," the first play put on at the New
Queen's. As Rose de Beaurepaire, I wore a white muslin Directoire dress
and looked absurdly young. There was one "curtain" which used to
convulse Wyndham. He had a line, "Whose child is this?" and there was I,
looking a mere child myself, and with a bad cold in my head too,
answering: "It's _bine_!" The very thought of it used to send us off
into fits of laughter. We hung on to chairs, helpless, limp, and
incapable. Mrs. Wigan said if we did it again, she would go in front and
hiss us, and she carried out her threat. The very next time we laughed,
a loud hiss rose from the stagebox. I was simply paralyzed with terror.

Dear old Mrs. Wigan! The stories that have been told about her would
fill a book! She was exceedingly plain, rather like a toad, yet,
perversely, she was more vain of her looks than of her acting. In the