“Ladies and gentlemen, I had left the theater when word was brought to me that you had done me the honor to call for me; as I conclude you have done so merely in conformity to a custom which is becoming the fashion of calling for certain performers after the play, I can only say, ladies and gentlemen, that I enter my protest against such a custom.  It is a foreign fashion, and we are Englishmen; therefore I protest against it.  I will take my leave of you by parodying Mercutio’s words:  Ladies and gentlemen, bon soir; there’s a French salutation for you.”  So saying he walked off the stage, leaving the audience rather surprised; and so was I. I think he is laboring under an incipient bilious attack.

We had a long discussion to-day as to the possibility of women being good dramatic writers.  I think it so impossible that I actually believe their physical organization is against it; and, after all, it is great nonsense saying that intellect is of no sex.  The brain is, of course, of the same sex as the rest of the creature; besides, the original feminine nature, the whole of our training and education, our inevitable ignorance of common life and general human nature, and the various experience of existence, from which we are debarred with the most sedulous care, is insuperably against it.  Perhaps some of the manly, wicked Queens Semiramis, Cleopatra, could have written plays; but they lived their tragedies instead of writing them.

Saturday, August 6th.—­After breakfast our excellent architect came to fetch us for our expedition to the breakwater.  My father complained of being dreadfully bilious, a bad preparation for the purpose.  I wanted to stay at home with him, or at all events to put off the party for an hour or two; but he would not hear of either plan.  So as soon as I was ready we set off.  We walked first to the M——­s’, and then proceeded in a body to the shore, where a Government boat was waiting for us; and what a cargo we were, to be sure!  My father, certainly no feather; our worthy friend, who must weigh eighteen stone, if a pound; Mr. and Mrs. W——­, thinnish bodies; but her friend, Dall, and myself decidedly thickish ones; then the pilot, a gaunt, square Scotchman; and four stout sailors.  The gallant little craft courtesied and courtesied as she received us, one by one, and at length, when we were all fairly and pretty closely packed, she put off, and breasted the water bravely, rising and dancing on the back of the waves like a dolphin.  I should have enjoyed it but for my father’s ghastly face of utter misery.  The day was dull, the sky and sea lead-colored, the brown coast by degrees lost its distinctness, and became covered with a dark haze that seemed to blend everything into a still, stony, threatening iron-gray mass.  The wind rose, the sea became inky black and swelled into heavy ridges, which made our little vessel dip deep and spring high, as she toiled forward; and then down came the rain—­such