Ellen Percy; or, The Memoirs of an Actress — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

— ee —- ELLEN PERCY; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF AN ACTRESS, ———— exceed the kindness I experienced at the hands of tbose excellent friends. As the moment approached when, at the com- mencement of the second scene, I was to emerge into the full glare of light and become the focus for nearly three thousand pair of eyes, I felt my heart sink within me: my confidence was rapidly evaporating. But exercising as it were all the moral energy which I possessed—nerving myself with all the courage I could muster up—I entered upon the grand ordeal. I remember that I tot- tered rather than walked upon the stage: and then, as rapturous shouts pealed forth my welcome, and white kerchiefs were waved by fair hands from the boxes, such a dizziness seized upon me that I wonder I did not fall. I was blinded by the glare of light: I could not distinguish the audience individually: I had a confused idea that the whole space upon which I looked was paved with human faces. The thought struck me that Ho. 8.—ELLenx PERoY, o7 ——s / f 4, ‘ |e Ur my failure was already doomed, and that I should not be enabled to give utterance to a single word. My part seemed to be as completely forgotten as if my memory had never taken cognizance of it at all. At length all was silence; and I had to com- mence. The prompter from his place gave me the key —“ By my troth, Nerissa:”’—and like a lightning-flash my part came back to my memory. I remember that I ejaculated within myself, “Now Iam safe!”—and I began speaking. Still it was in the midst of a species of confusion— with a continued dizziness of the brain, and with an oppressive sense of having as a pigmy under. taken the task of a giantess—that I went on. Although I felt that I was safe so far as my memory was concerned, I experienced no satisfac- tion at the manner I was enacting my part. There was in my brain a continuous sense of sins of commission and sins of omission,—doing some- thing against which the Normans in their lessons CONMUC 6)(6\(0) cS Com