The most amiable of the human race is in great force at Saratoga,
where the vast hotel service is wholly in its hands, and it had
honoured the effort of the comedians that night with a full house of
their own complexion. We who were not of it showed strangely enough
in the dark mass, who let us lead the applause, however, as if
doubtful themselves where it ought to come in, and whom I found
willing even to share some misplaced laughter of mine. They formed
two-thirds of the audience on the floor, and they were a cloud in
the gallery, scarcely broken by a gleam of white.

I entertained myself with them a good deal, and I thought how much
more delightful they were in their own kindly character than in
their assumption of white character, and I tried to define my
suffering from the performance as an effect from my tormented
sympathies rather than from my offended tastes. When the long
stress was over, and we rose and stood to let the crowd get out, I
asked Miss Gage if she did not think this must be the case. I do
not suppose she was really much more experienced in the theatre than
the people on the stage, some of whom I doubted to have ever seen a
play till they took part in East Lynne. But I thought I would ask
her that in order to hear what she would say; and she said very
simply that she had seen so few plays she did not know what to think
of it, and I could see that she was abashed by the fact. Kendricks
must have seen it too, for he began at once to save her from
herself, with all his subtle generosity, and to turn her shame to
praise. My heart, which remained sufficiently cold to her, warmed
more than ever to him, and I should have liked to tell her that here
was the finest and rarest human porcelain using itself like common
clay in her behalf, and to demand whether she thought she was worth