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EXPERIENCES AND MISTAKES
quent application of the lash at the hands
of many writers, of whom I was one. In-
cessant fault-finding, just or unjust, is seldom
good for anybody, because it either
sets up in its victim a condition of nervous
irritability, which defeats or impedes im-
provement, or produces in him a calloused
or defiant indifference.
Early in my professional experience I
committed a gross extravagance in lauda-
tion. Mrs. Scott-Siddons made her first
appearance as a reader in the Music Hall,
when she was in her twenty-sixth year.
Many Bostonians lost their heads on the
occasion. I infer from a reperusal of my
notices of her work that I was one of those
Bostonians. Her beauty was of a very ra-
diant, rare, and exquisite sort. It seems to
me that I recall that her ease and aplomb
of manner, as in her sole small person she
took possession of the huge desert of a
stage, and serenely occupied with her desk
a small oasis therein, impressed me even
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