I ran on to the stage in the mad scene,
and never have I felt such sympathy! This frail wraith, this poor
demented thing, could hold them in the hollow of her hand.... It was
splendid! "How long can I hold them?" I thought: "For ever!" Then I
laughed. That was the best Ophelia laugh of my life--my life that is
such a perfect kaleidoscope with the people and the places turning round
and round.
At the risk of being accused of indiscriminate flattery I must say that
I liked _all_ the American cities. Every one of them has a joke at the
expense of the others. They talk in New York of a man who lost both his
sons--"One died and the other went to live in Philadelphia." Pittsburg
is the subject of endless criticism, and Chicago is "the limit." To me,
indeed, it seemed "the limit"--of the industry, energy, and enterprise
of man. In 1812 this vast city was only a frontier post--Fort Dearborn.
In 1871 the town that first rose on these great plains was burned to the
ground. The growth of the present Chicago began when I was a grown
woman. I have celebrated my jubilee. Chicago will not do that for
another fifteen years!
I never visited the stock-yards. Somehow I had no curiosity to see a
live pig turned in fifteen minutes into ham, sausages, hair-oil, and the
binding for a Bible! I had some dread of being made sad by the spectacle
of so much slaughter--of hating the Chicago of the "abattoir" as much as
I had loved the Chicago of the Lake with the white buildings of the
World's Fair shining on it, the Chicago built on piles in splendid
isolation in the middle of the prairie, the Chicago of Marshall Field's
beautiful palace of a store, the Chicago of my dear friends, the Chicago
of my son's first appearance on the stage! Was it not a Chicago man who
wrote of my boy, tending the roses in the stage garden in "Eugene Aram,"
that he was "a most beautiful lad"!
"His eyes are full of sparkle, his smile is a ripple over his face,
and his laugh is as cherry and natural as a bird's song.
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