So it seems to me the great advantage of acting over work is one’s independence, one’s opportunity to improve oneself.  Its advantage over the professions is that it is self-sustaining from the start.  Its advantage over the arts is its swift reward for earnest endeavour.

It must be very hard to endure the contempt so often bestowed upon the woman who simply serves.  I had a little taste of it once myself; and though it was given me by accident, and apologies and laughter followed, I remember quite well that even that tiny taste was distinctly unpleasant—­yes, and bitter.  I was abroad with some very intimate friends, and Mrs. P——­, an invalid, owing to a mishap, was for some days without a maid.  We arrived in Paris hours behind time, late at night, and went straight to our reserved rooms, seeing no one but some sleepy servants.

Early next morning, going to my friends’ apartments, I came upon this piteous sight:  Mrs. P——­, who had a head of curly hair, was not only without a maid, but also without the use of her right arm.  The fame of Charcot had brought her to Paris.  Unless she breakfasted alone, which she hated, her hair must be arranged.  Behold, then, the emergency for which her husband, Colonel P——­, had, boldly not to say recklessly, offered his services.

I can see them now.  She, with clenched teeth of physical suffering and uplifted eye of the forgiving martyr, sat in combing jacket before him; and he, with the maid’s white apron girt tight about him just beneath his armpits, had on his soldierly face an expression of desperate resolve that suggested the leading of a forlorn hope.  A row of hair-pins protruded sharply from between his tightly closed lips; a tortoise-shell back-comb, dangling from one side of his full beard where he placed it for safety, made this amateur hairdresser a disturbing sight both for gods and men.

With legs well braced and far apart, his arms high lifted like outspread wings, he wielded the comb after the manner of a man raking hay.  For one moment all my sympathy was for the shrinking woman; then, when suddenly, in despite of the delicious morning coolness, a great drop of perspiration splashed from the Colonel’s corrugated brow, down into the obstreperous curly mass he wrestled with, I pitied him, too, and cried:—­

“Oh, I’ll do that.  Take care, you’ll swallow a pin or two if you contradict me.  Your spirit is willing, Colonel, but your flesh, for all you have such a lot of it, is weak, when you come to hair-dressing!”

And regardless of his very earnest protest, I took the tangled, tormented mass in hand and soon had it waving back into a fluffy knot; and just as I was drawing forth some short locks for the forehead, there came a knock and in bounced the mistress of the house, our landlady, Mme. F——­, who, missing our arrival the night before, came now to bid us welcome and inquire as to our satisfaction with arrangements, etc.  She was a short woman,