BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1919,
By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
TO
LUCY ARBELL
CONSUMMATE DRAMATIC ARTIST
AND
GREATEST CONTRALTO SINGER
OF OUR TIME
IN AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION
I DEDICATE
THIS ENGLISH VERSION
OF HER
BELOVED MASTER'S BOOK
"Chère amie, gardez aussi sa réligion, et qu'elle vous conduise, ferme et courageuse, au milieu des cahots de la vie, jusq'au paradis des arts."
FOREWORD
I have been often asked whether I put together the recollections of my life from notes jotted down from day to day. To tell the truth I did, and this is how I began the habit of doing so regularly.
My mother—a model wife and mother, who taught me the difference between right and wrong—said to me on my tenth birthday:
"Here is a diary." (It was one of those long-shaped diaries which one found in those days at the little Bon Marché, not the immense enterprise we know now.) "And," she added, "every night before you go to bed, you must write down on the pages of this memento what you have seen, said, or done during the day. If you have said or done anything which you realize is wrong, you must confess it in writing in these pages. Perhaps it will make you hesitate to do wrong during the day."
How characteristic of an unusual woman, a woman of upright mind and honest heart this idea was! By placing the matter of conscience among the first of her son's duties, she made Conscience the very basis of her methods of teaching.