part I could hardly have explained why with so little encouragement I

was so devoted to the rather tedious drill. Pauline was still at the seminary, and the regular hours of practice made a bulwark against an insidious proprietary air which Tommy Bettersworth began to wear. Besides the voice training, I had a system of physical culture, artificial and unsound as I have since learned, but serving to restrain my too exuberant gesture, and much memorizing of poems and plays for practice work. I hardly know if the Professor had any dramatic talent or not; probably not, as he made nothing, I remember, of stopping me in the middle of a great passion for the sake of a dropped consonant, and deprecated original readings on my part.

It was his relish for musical cadence as much as its intellectual appreciation that led him to select the Elizabethan drama, in the great scenes of which I was letter perfect by the time I had come to the end of the Professor's instruction, and at the end too, it seemed, of my devices for dodging the destiny of women.