Being hideously decorated once with a fool's cap of vast dimensions, and
advised to hide, not my "diminished head," but my horrible disgrace,
from all beholders, I took the earliest opportunity of dancing down the
carriage-drive to meet the postman, a great friend of mine, and attract
his observation and admiration to my "helmet," which I called aloud upon
all wayfarers also to contemplate, until removed from an elevated bank I
had selected for this public exhibition of myself and my penal costume,
which was beginning to attract a small group of passers-by.
My next malefactions were met with an infliction of bread and water,
which I joyfully accepted, observing, "Now I am like those poor dear
French prisoners that everybody pities so." Mrs. Siddons at that time
lived next door to us; she came in one day when I had committed some of
my daily offenses against manners or morals, and I was led, nothing
daunted, into her awful presence, to be admonished by her.
Melpomene took me upon her lap, and, bending upon me her "controlling
frown," discoursed to me of my evil ways in those accents which curdled
the blood of the poor shopman, of whom she demanded if the printed
calico she purchased of him "would wash.
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