known in Winchelsea, as everywhere else. One bright, sunburnt little maid, whom I met in one of the lanes, told me she was going to Miss Terry's to tea "next Wednesday," and, added the child, with eyes as big as stars and twinkling as brightly, "Miss Terry says poetry to us!" I was glad the child told me that, because it made assurance doubly sure of my estimate of the woman's character. I thought of the packed theatre, and the people who had paid half-a-guinea for their stalls; then of the handful of little ones who had an unpurchasable entertainment for nothing—listening to Miss Terry "saying poetry."
I returned to Tower Cottage.
We met again on the turret top, and then I listened to the story of her life. How earnestly she spoke of everything associated with her brilliant career. She has always been in the best circle—theatrically speaking—ever since she began. But she referred to all this very quietly. If Ellen Terry impresses one on the stage as an actress, how much more does she do so when sitting surrounded by one of the fairest of Nature's scenes, as a woman! When she remembers an incident it is indeed remembered. All the circumstances connected with it crowd into her memory, the place, the people—everything, and she lives through it once again, even though it may belong to her very youngest years.
Miss Ellen Alice Terry was born at Coventry in St. Valentine's month. St. Valentine's month has seen the natal day of many of the great—Wordsworth, Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Rossini, Joseph Jefferson, Victor Hugo, Handel, Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, George Washington, Cardinal Newman, and Henry Irving.
"My father and mother," said Miss Terry, "were acting from place to place. Then I came to them at Coventry. There is no trace of the house where I was born—it may have been at an inn or in lodgings. It is
