It has always been a matter of secret pride with me that, in my small way, I did something for the Union too. I heard that our patriotic and inartistic _Daughter of the Regiment_ caused several lads to enlist. I do not know if this were true, but I hoped so at the time, and it might well have been so. I had a dresser, Ellen Conklin, who had some strange and rather ghastly tales to tell of the slave trade in the days before the war. She had been in other opera companies, small troupes, that sang their way from the far South, and the primitive and casual manner of their travel had offered many opportunities for her to visit any number of slave markets. She frequently had been harrowed to the breaking point by the sight of mothers separated from their children, and men and women who loved each other being parted for life. The worst horror of it all had been to her the examining of the female slaves as to their physical equipment, in which the buyers were more often brutal than not. Ellen was Irish and emotional; and it tore her heart out to see such things; but she kept on going to the slave sales just the same. [Illustration: =General Horace Porter= From a photograph by Pach Bros.] "They nearly killed me, Miss," she declared to me with tears in her eyes, "but I could never resist one!" Though I quite understood Ellen's emotions, I found it a little difficult to understand why she invited them so persistently. But I have learned that this is a very common human weakness--luckily for managers who put on harrowing plays. Many people go to the theatre to cry. When I sang Mignon the audience always cried and wiped its eyes; and I felt convinced that many had come for exactly that purpose. Two women I know once went to see Helena Modjeska in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ and, when the curtain fell, one of them turned to the other with streaming eyes and gasped between her choking sobs: "L--l--let's come--(sob)--again--(sob)--t--t--to-morrow night! (sob, sob)." Personally, I think there are occasions enough for tears in this life, bitter or consoling, without having somebody on the stage draw them out over fictitious joys and sorrows.