She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask me to walk home with
her, concealing, as we talked, her transparent preoccupations under the
guise of a sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had last seen
me. Of what concerned her, I learned only that Lancelot was well and that
for the present she was not lecturing--she was tired and her doctor had
ordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house she paused and held
out her hand. She had been so glad to see me and perhaps if I were in
Boston again--the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out and closed the
door on the conclusion of the phrase.
Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, I found a letter from
her. In it she owned that she was troubled, that of late she had been
unsuccessful, and that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, and
could spare her a little of that invaluable advice which--. A few days
later the advice was at her disposal. She told me frankly what had
happened. Her public had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on for
some time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the causes. She had more
rivals than formerly--younger women, she admitted, with a smile that could
still afford to be generous--and then her audiences had grown more
critical and consequently more exacting. Lecturing--as she understood it--
used to be simple enough. You chose your topic--Raphael, Shakespeare,
Gothic Architecture, or some such big familiar "subject"--and read up
about it for a week or so at the Athenaeum or the Astor Library, and then
told your audience what you had read.
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