Of course, Ellen Terry's first stage recollection is her appearance as the infant Mamillius, when she saw "the Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, the Princess Royal, and the Prince of Wales" in the royal box, and was, as a matter of consequence, so awestruck that she could hardly articulate her words. She played this part for one hundred and two nights without a break--a marvellous record for so young a child. This long run of "The Winter's Tale" showed that even in the "fifties," when long runs were almost unknown, a Shakespearean play, faultlessly staged, and admirably acted, could attract a prolonged succession of audiences. During their engagement with the Charles Keans, she tells me (by the way, she is never tired of singing the praises of Mrs. Kean), she and her sister Kate studied--ay, and carefully studied--all the feminine characters of each play they acted in. This fact she tries to impress on the countless young ladies who want to adopt acting as a profession, and who apply to her for advice. "What do you know?--what have you studied?" she asks them. "Could you, for example, undertake to play Hero to a Beatrice; Nerissa to a Portia; or Celia to a Rosalind?" Their almost invariable reply is that they have studied nothing--that they have only an ambition to "go on the stage." Then she will advise them to devote themselves to learning and understanding such parts in case an opportunity should come in their way. Poor young ladies! I don't suppose they like such advice, for assuredly they all want to begin as Beatrice, Portia, or Rosalind. Neither, I am sure, are they aware that they lacerate the tender heart of the great actress because she feels she can do nothing for them. No one knows better than Ellen Terry that life-long devotion to her art is the only way by which a true actress can reach the goal of her ambition, and there maintain her place. She maintains, moreover, that she should be taught to turn her hand to anything. "When I played Titania at Bath," she says with a laugh, "I made my own dress. It was long, and of transparent, clinging white, all 'crinkled' by washing and wringing." She limns a pretty little sketch of herself as she set forth with her father to seek her engagement with Mademoiselle Albina di Rhona at the Royalty Theatre. "I borrowed Kate's new bonnet--pink silk, trimmed with black lace--and was engaged _at once_. I thought I looked nice in that bonnet, and father said pink was my colour." Evidently she thought that her bonnet rather than herself had found favour with the manageress.