“If I were to have the choice of one last performance by the _one actress_ I admire the most I am afraid I should quarrel with Fate and insist on choosing _two_--Adelaide Neilson in _Juliet_ and Sarah Bernhardt in anything. To me, she is, in all seriousness, one of the everlasting wonders of art. Her voice was like liquid gold; her delivery was, and is, a supreme example for any man or woman that ever stepped on a stage. She added a language to all the others. French is beautiful; but French-as-spoken-by-Sarah-Bernhardt is sublime! As an actress I admired her most in the pre-Sardou plays; but she is great in everything. She has always practised one of the great truths your dear father taught--that the art of acting is the art of _expression_ not _re_pression. I consider that she is the best _listener_ I ever saw--and very few except stage managers know how difficult it is to seem to listen for the first times to speeches which have been heard over and over again, sometimes for many years. She is always mistress of the scene. It is a dramatic education just to watch her. She could play ‘quiet’ scenes as well as anybody else--if not better. But when it came to the great emotional outbursts Sarah Bernhardt could always make them and make them so that she brought her audience right up on their feet. A good deal of the so-called ‘repressed school’ of acting is not art but artifice--mere trickery. Many players of that school ‘repress’ because they haven’t got anything to give out--they make a virtue of necessity and dodge what they cannot do. Sarah Bernhardt never tried to dodge anything and she never needed to, because she never undertook anything she could not do superbly. As to the secret of her wonderful success and great career that you hear people talk so much about, it is simply this: She loves her work. [Illustration: Photographed by Rochlitz Studio Belasco’s Collection. SARAH BERNHARDT] When man, woman, or child _loves_ what they are doing, the doing of it is to them like God’s sunlight to the flowers, it keeps them alive and makes them beautiful. “Much as I admire Mme. Bernhardt as an actress I think I admire her most as a woman. She sets an example of pluck and perseverance for all of us, and I have always been very solicitous of her good opinion. She has come to see several of my productions and her approval has meant much to me. I once gave a special performance of ‘Adrea’ for her,[9] because that was the only way she could get to see it and her admiration and applause I regard as the highest honor. “Last Christmas I sent her a telegram which I should like to give you. This is it: “‘Dear and adored friend:--