PREFACE. THE following Story is founded on facts, gathered in the course of an extensive professional career, although not occurring, it is perhaps needless to add, in the order in which, for the purpose of being woven into a fictitious narrative, they are now made to appear. The characters figuring in these "SHIFTING SCENES" are also equally real, but sufficiently disguised in their portraiture, it is hoped, to avoid the charge of ill-natured personality. The writer's aim, indeed, has been, rather to uphold than to depreciate the character, or "say aught in malice," of a profession to which she thinks it no discredit to belong. In the delineation of Emma the true heroine of the tale -she has endeavoured to show how the vicissitudes, the trials, privations, and sufferings, attendant upon the life of a strolling player, may serve to develop some of the best qualities that do honour to human nature: that a high sense of moral duty, patience under disappointment and the pressure of hopeless difficulties, together with the constant |