A few memories

CHAPTER XV
FANNY KEMBLE, in her delightful " Recollections of a Girlhood," says, in speaking of her aunt, the famous Mrs. Siddons: "The last years of her life made a profound impression upon me. Her apparent deafness and indifference to everything I attributed less to her advanced age and impaired powers than to what I supposed to be the withering and dying influence of the over-stimulating atmosphere of emotion, excitement, and admiration in which she had passed her life."
Certainly one of the evils attending the abnormal rush of the theatre is, to the young, a restlessness accompanied by vague longings which, as soon as satisfied, give way to new dissatisfaction ; and, to the old, that pathetic listlessness described so well by Fanny Kemble, who, having spent her life in a theatrical family of great fame, realized its full meaning.
There is a belief among certain classes that the stage and immorality are synonymous. This is 15