perhaps, if you would be so kind.”  “Anecdotes?” said I (with three points of interrogation).  “What do you mean?  What about?” “Why, ma’am” (with a low bow), “about Mrs. Kemble, of course.”  Now, my worthy agent’s remuneration was to consist of a certain proportion of the receipts of the readings, and, that being the case, I felt I had no right absolutely to forbid him all puffing advertisements and decently legitimate efforts to attract public attention and interest to performances by which he was to benefit.  At the same time, I also felt it imperatively necessary that there should be some limit to these proceedings, if I was to be made a party to them.  I therefore told him that, as his interest was involved in the success of the readings, I could not forbid his puffing them to some extent, as, if I did, he might consider himself injured.  “But,” said I, while refusing the contribution of any personal anecdotes to his forthcoming article, “take care what you do in that line, for if you overdo it in the least, I will write an article, myself, on my readings, showing up all their faults, and turning them into ridicule as I do not believe any one else either would or could.  So puff just as quietly as you can.”  I rather think my agent left me with the same opinion of my competency in business that Mr. Macready had expressed as to my proficiency in my profession, namely, that “I did not know the rudiments of it.”

Mr. Mitchell, who from the first took charge of all my readings in England, and was the very kindest, most considerate, and most courteous of all managers, on one occasion, complaining bitterly to my sister of the unreasonable objection I had to all laudatory advertisements of my readings, said to her, with a voice and countenance of the most rueful melancholy, and with the most appealing pathos, “Why, you know, ma’am, it’s really dreadful; you know, Mrs. Kemble won’t even allow us to say in the bills, these celebrated readings; and you know, ma’am, it’s really impossible to do with less; indeed it is!  Why, ma’am, you know even Morrison’s pills are always advertised as these celebrated pills!”—­an illustration of the hardships of his case which my sister repeated to me with infinite delight.

When I saw the shop-windows full of Lawrence’s sketch of me, and knew myself the subject of almost daily newspaper notices; when plates and saucers were brought to me with small figures of me as Juliet and Belvidera on them; and finally, when gentlemen showed me lovely buff-colored neck-handkerchiefs which they had bought, and which had, as I thought, pretty lilac-colored flowers all over them, which proved on nearer inspection to be minute copies of Lawrence’s head of me, I not unnaturally, in the fullness of my inexperience, believed in my own success.

I have since known more of the manufacture of public enthusiasm and public triumphs, and, remembering to how many people it was a matter of vital importance that the public interest should be kept alive in me, and Covent Garden filled every night I played, I have become more skeptical upon the subject.