Once through fright, fatigue, and shame I lost all self-control, and turning to the creature whom I could not outwalk, I cried out with a sob, “Oh, I am so tired, so frightened, and so ashamed; you make me wish that I were dead!” And to my amazement, he answered gruffly, “It’s a pity I’m not,” and disappeared in the dark side street.

After an actress has married and has a protector to see her safely home nights, she is apt to recall and to tell amusing stories of her past experiences; but I notice those tales are never told by the girls—­they only become funny when looked at from the point of perfect safety, though like everything else in the world, the dreaded midnight walk shows a touch of the ludicrous now and then.

I recall one snowy January night when I was returning home.  It was on a Saturday, and I had played a five-act play twice with but a sandwich for my dinner, the weather forbidding my going home after the matinee.  So being without change to ride with, hungry and unutterably weary, I started, bag in hand, to walk up Sixth Avenue.  On the east side stood a certain club house (it stands there yet, by the way), whose peculiar feature was a vine-hung veranda across its entire front, from which an unusually long flight of steps led to the sidewalk.  Quite unmolested, I had walked from the stage door almost to this building, when suddenly, as if he had sprung from the very earth, a man was at my elbow addressing me, and the fact that he was not English, and so not understood, did not in the slightest degree lessen the terror his evil face inspired.  I shrank away from him, and he caught at my wrist.  It was too much.  I gave a cry and started to run, when, tall and broad, a man appeared at the foot of the club-house steps, just ahead of me.  Ashamed to be seen running, I halted, and dropped into a walk again.

Then with that exaggerated straightening of back and stiffening of knee adopted by one who tries to walk a floor-crack or chalk-line, the second man approached me.  He was very big, he was silvery grey, and his dignity was portentous.  At every step he struck the pavement a ringing blow with a splendid malacca cane.  Old-fashioned and gold-headed, it looked enough like its owner to have been his twin brother.  He lifted his high silk hat, and with somewhat florid indignation inquired:  “My c-hild, was that in-nfamous cur annoying you shust now?  A-a-h!” he broke off, flourishing his cane over his head, “there y-you slink; I w-wish I had hold of you.”  And I heard the running footsteps of No. 1 as he darted away, across and down the avenue.

“An-and the police?” sarcastically resumed the big man, who wavered unsteadily now and then.  “H-how useful are the police!  How many do y-you see at this moment, pray, eh?  And, by the way, m’ child, what in the devil’s name brings yer on the street alone at this hour, say, tell me that?” and he assumed a most judicial attitude and manner.