“I need scarcely inform you, my dear Desmond, that such an idea was to me, at the first blush, absolute HORROR; but when my sweet girl urged her predilection for the drama, and reminded me of the handsome fortunes realized by Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O’Neill, and other professors of that classic art, I relented, and allowed Lucy to have her own way. The dear girl had educated herself and reared herself, as it were, with so little help from me, that it would have seemed ill in me to frustrate her hopes by my cold reasoning or timid doubts. Nor had I any very agreeable alternative to offer her. My circumstances have year by year become more embarrassed since that pleasant summer we spent together at Henley, and the home which I can provide for my only child is of the poorest. Was I, then, to stand in the way of her advancement? “To make a long story short, I yielded, and have since that time devoted my best energies to my dear girl’s service. She is but nineteen, and has already appeared at the Theatres Royal, Stony Stratford, Market Deeping, Oswestry, and Stamford, with considerable success. Her sympathies are with the buskin, rather than with the sock; but at Oswestry she performed the part of Lady Teazle, and received much applause from an appreciative, although somewhat limited, audience. “We have now essayed a bolder venture. My Lucy has obtained, with inordinate difficulty, a London engagement. I had, in my ignorance of the dramatic world, fondly imagined that a young person of unmistakeable genius had only to apply to the manager of one of the patent theatres, in order to be placed at once upon the boards that Siddons trod. But I find, alas! that in most cases it is only after years of patient and ill-paid drudgery in small provincial towns the dramatic aspirant works his or her way to the metropolis,--nay, indeed, there are many who never reach that splendid goal, but who journey through life as the favourite actor of the Theatre Royal, Market Deeping or Oswestry, and who are not ill-pleased with their renown. “But to return. My daughter’s engagement will be a brief one; but she is to appear in a wide range of the drama, in conjunction with Mr. Henry de Mortemar, a gentleman of some local celebrity, though as yet unknown to the metropolitan critics. The theatre is an obscure one, and Lucy must speedily return to the drudgery of a provincial stage unless some powerful and friendly hand shall be interposed in her behalf. Yours, my good friend, is the influence which I would solicit for my dear child. A word from you would doubtless immediately secure a profitable engagement at one of the West-end theatres. I beseech you, for the sake of ‘auld lang syne,’ to say that all-powerful word, and to confer a lasting obligation on your poor old friend and tutor, “TRISTRAM ALFORD. “_Paul’s Terrace, Islington, Nov. 14, 186--_”