The way the snow "goes" for that poor woman is most unfair. It always snows much heavier in the particular spot where she is sitting than it does anywhere else in the whole street. Why, we have sometimes seen a heroine sitting in the midst of a blinding snow-storm while the other side of the road was as dry as a bone. And it never seemed to occur to her to cross over.
We have even known a more than unusually malignant snow-storm to follow a heroine three times round the stage and then go off (R.) with her.
Of course you can't get away from a snow-storm like that! A stage snow-storm is the kind of snow-storm that would follow you upstairs and want to come into bed with you.
Another curious thing about these stage snow-storms is that the moon is always shining brightly through the whole of them. And it shines only on the heroine, and it follows her about just like the snow does.
Nobody fully understands what a wonderful work of nature the moon is except people acquainted with the stage. Astronomy teaches you something about the moon, but you learn a good deal more from a few visits to a theater. You will find from the latter that the moon only shines on heroes and heroines, with perhaps an occasional beam on the comic man: it always goes out when it sees the villain coming.
It is surprising, too, how quickly the moon can go out on the stage. At one moment it is riding in full radiance in the midst of a cloudless sky, and the next instant it is gone! Just as though it had been turned off at a meter. It makes you quite giddy at first until you get used to it.
The stage heroine is inclined to thoughtfulness rather than gayety.
In her cheerful moments the stage heroine thinks she sees the spirit of her mother, or the ghost of her father, or she dreams of her dead baby.
But this is only in her very merry moods. As a rule, she is too much occupied with weeping to have time for frivolous reflections.
She has a great flow of language and a wonderful gift of metaphor and simile—more forcible than elegant—and this might be rather trying in a wife under ordinary circumstances. But as the hero is generally sentenced to ten years' penal servitude on his wedding-morn, he escapes for a period from a danger that might well appall a less fortunate bridegroom.