"It is well" she said, "and if thou dost not fear to leave the watch with her, wilt thou and thy husband come as our guests to see our Hamlet as we have conceived him to be?"
It was the first of Shakespeare's plays I had ever seen, and my blood ran cold as I breathlessly watched the portrayal of it by these, the most celebrated actors of their day (Charles Kean and his wife, Ellen Tree), with talents so versatile that I cried over the tragedy as if my heart would break, and laughed with equal heartiness over "Toodles," the farce which followed.
At the close of the play the actress brought her husband into the box and introduced him. Unlike her, he did all his acting on the stage; she stabbed her potatoes and said, "What! no b-e-a-n-s?"
We accepted their kind invitation to share their carriage back to the house, and enjoyed, too, some of the delicious supper prepared for them. It was their last year on the stage, and I never saw them again, though I treasure their little keepsake, given me in exchange for one not half so pretty, and gratefully remember the pleasure they put into our lives during the days they were our "Left-handers."
Among others, there came in time that king of comedians, noble in mind as he was perfect in art, Joe Jefferson. This pleasant acquaintance did not end with our Canadian experience. The next time we saw Joe Jefferson he gave a performance in Richmond and turned over the whole proceeds to a war-ruined Confederate who had assisted him in early days, all in such a quiet manner as to fulfill the spirit of the Scriptural injunction regarding the right and left hands. The kindness which was shown by the wealthy tobacconist—the seeming favorite of fortune—to the poor lad in the beginning of that career the distinction of which, even then, could be foretold, was thus gracefully repaid a thousand times by the successful actor.
Our landlady made a tour of inspection of all the rooms every Friday, but to us she made her visits longer each time, showing a growing interest in our affairs. She could not solve the mystery of our having come from such a palatial home to her boarding-house. Then, too, one of my "shilling visitors" happening to be the Governor-General and another an English officer, they were also a cause of wonder. She was so insistent in this unbounded curiosity that we were compelled to seek a larger house where we should be more lost to sight, especially as just at this time two prominent Southern gentlemen, Mr. Beverly Tucker and Mr. Beverly Saunders, had been gagged and taken through the lines, though their release was immediately demanded by the English government.
Much to my husband's relief, I volunteered to assume the disagreeable task of notifying her, which notice she seemed intuitively to have anticipated and determined to thwart by telling of her troubles, all of which she laid at her husband's door.
"He is got so high-minded now," she said, "he refuses to blacken all the boots at night—leaves the top floor ones till morning. Wants to set upstairs with me and the girls, instead of staying down in the kitchen, looking for chaws and to be handy; expects us to hunt tins to shine and mend, and nails to drive; won't eat the boarders' leavings; reads the Stateser's newspaper that he sends to his girl; sets on it when he hears us coming; took money from Stateser, too, and was that sly he was going to spend it on himself, and I giving him all he needs."
Taking advantage of her pause for sympathy, I edged in my notice. She immediately put all the blame of our going on "that Johnson," and, though I assured her that he had nothing whatever to do with it, wailed: