III-III

In Lincoln the best part of the theatrical
season came late, when the good companies
stopped off there for one-night stands, after
their long runs in New York and Chicago.
That spring Lena went with me to see Joseph
Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle," and to a
war play called "Shenandoah." She was in-
flexible about paying for her own seat; said
she was in business now, and she wouldn't
have a schoolboy spending his money on her.
I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything
was wonderful to her, and everything was
true. It was like going to revival meetings
with some one who was always being con-
verted. She handed her feelings over to the
actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation.
Accessories of costume and scene meant much
more to her than to me. She sat entranced
through "Robin Hood" and hung upon the
lips of the contralto who sang, "Oh, Promise
Me!"

Toward the end of April, the billboards,
which I watched anxiously in those days,

[[307]]

p306 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p307w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p308

v?