evening, to be returned when the play was over.  But all arguments were fruitless; nothing but the Ready, or a pledge of full equal value.  Such people would have despised a Demosthenes, or a Cicero, with all their rhetorical flourishes, if their oratorian gowns had been in pledge.  Well! what must be done?  The whole family in confusion and all at their wits-end; disgrace, with her glaring eyes and extended mouth, ready to devour.  Fatal appearance!

* * * * *

“At last Winny, the wife (that is, Winnifrede), put on a compos’d countenance (but, alas! with a troubled heart); stepp’d to a neighbouring tavern, and bespoke a very hot negus, to comfort Johnny in the great part he was to perform that night, begging to have the silver tankard with the lid, because, as she said, ’a covering, and the vehicle silver, would retain heat longer than any other metal,’ The request was comply’d with, the negus carry’d to the playhouse piping hot, popp’d into a vile earthen mug—­the tankard l’argent travelled incog. under her apron (like the Persian ladies veil’d), popp’d into the pawnbroker’s hands, in exchange for the suit—­put on and play’d its part, with the rest of the wardrobe; when its duty was over, carried back to remain in its old depository; the tankard return’d the right road; and, when the tide flowed with its lunar influence, the stranded suit was wafted into safe harbour again, after paying a little for ‘dry docking,’ which was all the damage received.”

* * * * *

And Mr. Chetwood adds: 

  “Thus woman’s wit (tho’ some account it evil)
  With artful wiles can overreach the Devil.”

Among such as these, good, bad and indifferent, moral and otherwise, did Mistress Oldfield pass what hours she consecrated to the theatre.  In the early years, when merely a poor, struggling postulant before the altar of fame, the girl must have been more or less intimate with her dramatic associates, but as time went on and Nance blazed into a star of the first magnitude, the old feeling of fellowship may have become weakened.  Not that the actress was in any sense snobbish; rather let it be said that the circumstances of her celebrity proved quite enough, in the course of human affairs, to separate her from the other players.  Indeed, one of her biographers relates that Oldfield always went in state to Drury Lane, accompanied by two footmen, and that she seldom spoke to any one of the actors.[A]

[Footnote A:  She always went to the house (i.e., the theatre) in the same dress she had worn at dinner in her visits to the houses of great people; for she was much caressed on account of her general merit, and her connection with Mr. Churchill.  She used to go to the playhouse in a chair, attended by two footmen; she seldom spoke to any one of the actors, and was allowed a sum of money to buy her own clothes.—­“General Biographical Dictionary.”]