This Minshull made away with over L3000, the sum of Susan's savings,[A] and the erring woman, alike false to her virtue and the destroyer of that virtue, ended her darkening days amid the clouds of insanity.
[Footnote A: In the year 1714, they (Booth and Susan) bought several tickets in the State Lottery, and agreed to share equally whatever fortune might ensue.

Booth gained nothing; the lady won a prize of 5000 pounds, and kept it.

His friends counselled him to claim half the sum, but he laughingly remarked that there had never been any but a verbal agreement on the matter; and since the result had been fortunate for his friend, she should enjoy it all .-- Dr.DORAN.] The picture is far prettier with Hester Santlow leaping into the affections of the actor, and finally marrying him according to the law of the land.

She loved the great man tenderly, ministered to his wants with a wifely devotion which would hardly suit the "New Woman," and when he was wont to eat too much (for he had given up the flowing bowl[A] and must cultivate some other species of gluttony), the ex-dancer would have the dinner-table removed.
[Footnote A: Booth told Cibber that he "had been for sometime too frank a lover of the bottle; but having had the happiness to observe into what contempt and distress Powel had plung'd himself by the same vice, he was so struck with the terror of his example, that he fix'd a resolution (which from that time to the end of his days he strictly observed) of utterly reforming it." And Colley adds; "An uncommon act of philosophy in a young man!"] Strange, is it not, that the wife who could be so full of constancy, and all the other virtues, previously lived a notoriously loose existence?
For it had been the fate of Santlow to stand continually in the glare of that fierce light which beats upon the stage, and never, perhaps, did she give the town more to talk about than by her celebrated _rencontre_ with Captain Montague.

The story affords a glimpse of the free-and-easy manners which sometimes prevailed in theatres, and will bear the telling, ere we bid farewell to its fair heroine.
"About the year 1717," writes Cibber, "a young actress of a desirable person (Santlow), sitting in an upper box at the Opera, a military gentleman (Montague) thought this a proper opportunity to secure a little conversation with her, the particulars of which were probably no more worth repeating than it seems the Damoiselle then thought them worth listening to; for, notwithstanding the fine things he said to her, she rather chose to give the Musick the preference of her attention.