Mr. Hawthorne wished me to invite her to dine
and pass the night. I invited her to dine on the 29th of December.
She accepted and came. I found her tall as her famous character, Meg
Merrilies, with a face of peculiar, square form, most amiable in
expression, and so very untheatrical in manner and bearing that I
should never suspect her to be an actress. She has left the stage now
two years, and retires upon the fortune she has made; for she was a
very great favorite on the English stage, and retired in the height of
her fame. The children liked her prodigiously, and Rose was never
weary of the treasures attached to her watch-chain. I could not
recount to you the gems clustered there,--such as a fairy tiny gold
palette, with all the colors arranged; a tiny easel with a colored
landscape, quarter of an inch wide; a tragic and comic mask, just big
enough for a gnome; a cross of the Legion of Honor; a wallet, opening
with a spring, and disclosing compartments just of a size for the
Keeper of the Privy Purse of the Fairy Queen; a dagger for a pygmy;
two minute daguerreotypes of friends, each as large as a small pea, in
a gold case; an opera-glass; Faith, Hope, and Charity represented by a
golden heart and anchor, and I forget what,--a little harp; I cannot
remember any more. These were all, I think, memorials of friends. In
the morning she sat down to 'Una's beautifully toned piano, and sang
one of Lockhart's Spanish ballads, with eloquent expression, so as to
make my blood tingle.
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