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238 her life, told by herself, is too good to be lost; so I insert it here.

"When I was a poor girl," said the Duchess of St. Albans, "working very hard for my thirty shillings a week, I went down to Liverpool during the holidays, where I was always well received. I was to perform in a new piece, something like those pretty little affecting dramas they get up now at our minor theatres; and in my character I represented a poor, friendless orphan-girl, reduced to the most wretched poverty. A heartless tradesman prosecutes the sad heroine for a heavy debt, and insists on putting her in prison, unless some one will be bail for her. The girl replies, "Then I have no hope; I have not a friend in the world." "What! will no one be bail for you, to save you from going to prison?" asks the stern creditor. "I have told you I have not a friend on earth," was the reply. But just as I was uttering the words, I saw a sailor in the upper gallery springing over the railing, letting himself down from one tier to another, until he bounded clear over the orchestra and footlights, and placed himself beside me in a moment. 'Yes, you shall have one friend at least, my poor young woman,' said he, with the greatest expression in his honest, sunburnt countenance: 'I will go bail for you to any amount. And as for you,'turning to the frightened actor, 'if you don't bear a band and shift your moorings, you lubber, it will be worse for you when I come athwart your bows!' Every creature in the house rose: the uproar was indescribable—peals of