On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S——­, with her accustomed punctuality ascended the long rambling staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remember) the Old Bath Theatre.  All over the island it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday.  It was not much that Barbara had to claim.

This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour.  You would have taken her to have been at least five years older.

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the scene.  But the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some few months past intrusted to her the performance of whole parts.  You may guess the self-consequence of the promoted Barbara.  She had already drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York; and in her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales.  She would have done the elder child in Morton’s pathetic after-piece to the life; but as yet the “Children in the Wood” was not.

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment.  But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child’s use, she kept them all; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight to behold them bound up in costliest Morocco, each single—­each small part making a book—­with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c.  She had conscientiously kept them as they had been delivered to her; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with.  They were precious to her for their affecting remembrancings.  They were her principia, her rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfection.  “What,” she would say, “could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, have done for these darlings?”

I am in no hurry to begin my story—­indeed I have little or none to tell—­so I will just mention an observation of hers connected with that interesting time.