ders her children savagely before the audience, but, owing to Ristori's reluctance, Legouve, the author, altered his situations so that the murder is implied rather than consummated, and she made the great tragedy one of her successes.
She was a beautiful woman, of the dark-eyed Italian type, a large nose, and the most perfect figure. I remember her dancing the german at a ball at Mrs. Roosevelt's (who was one of the most distinguished hostesses of the period) quite as well as the youngest debutante, and a most serene and unaffected person she was, fond of talking and disposed to be communicative about herself. She told me that she was the daughter of poor actors, who happened to be at a little Venetian city, Cividale del Friuli, when she entered on the responsibilities of life; and at two months of age she was brought on the stage in a basket in the play The New Year's Gift, while at four years of age "La Piccola Ristori" appeared in a child's part as an infant phenomenon. Even then her salary was greater than that of her parents. As a girl she inherited from her father a great love of music, and Nature gave her a mezzo-soprano voice of the finest quality. She was good enough to sit down to the piano and accompany herself while singing me some of the very interesting Italian popular songs of the people. But her grandmother, a fine old tragic actress, probably seeing the genius for acting strong in the child, used to take away her guitar and shut her up in a trunk, "à la Ginevra," when she sang; so she was quietly ruled out from being a singer. This threw her into a deep melancholy, and she would only play with her dolls as dead bodies, laying them out and surrounding them with candles. This gloomy amusement she followed up by a passionate attachment
