shock of the likeness, and bethought her of "a strawberry mark upon my
left arm." (_Really_ I had one over my left knee.) That settled it, for
there was no such mark to be found upon the poor corpse. It was just at
this moment that the news came to me in my country retreat that I had
been found dead, and I flew up to London to give ocular proof to my poor
distracted parents that I was alive. Mother, who had been the only one
not to identify the drowned girl, confessed to me that she was so like
me that just for a second she, too, was deceived. You see, they knew I
had not been very happy since my return to the stage, and when I went
away without a word, they were terribly anxious, and prepared to believe
the first bad tidings that came to hand. It came in the shape of that
most extraordinary likeness between me and that poor soul who threw
herself into the river.

I was not twenty-one when I left the stage for the second time, and I
haven't made up my mind yet whether it was good or bad for me, as an
actress, to cease from practicing my craft for six years. Talma, the
great French actor, recommends long spells of rest, and says that
"perpetual indulgence in the excitement of impersonation dulls the
sympathy and impairs the imaginative faculty of the comedian." This is
very useful in my defense, yet I could find many examples which prove
the contrary. I could never imagine Henry Irving leaving the stage for
six months, let alone six years, and I don't think it would have been of
the slightest benefit to him. But he had not been on the stage as a
child.

If I was able to rest so long without rusting, it was, I am sure,
because I had been thoroughly trained in the technique of acting long
before I reached my twentieth year--an age at which most students are
just beginning to wrestle with elementary principles.