five o'clock
California papers please copy . In the lives of professionals , whatever their profession may be , the ordinary work of the day makes very little impression on the memory , whereas a very strong and lasting one is often made by circumstances which a man of leisure or a woman of the world might barely notice , and would soon forget . In Margaret 's life there were but two sorts of days , those on which she was to sing and those on which she was at liberty . In the one case she had a cutlet at five o'clock , and supper when she came home ; in the other , she dined like other people and went to bed early . At the end of a season in New York , the evenings on which she had sung all seemed to have been exactly alike ; the people had always applauded at the same places , she had always been called out about the same number of times , she had always felt very much the same pleasure and satisfaction , and she had invariably eaten her supper with the same appetite . Actors lead far more emotional lives than singers , partly because they have the excitement of a new piece much more often , with the tremendous nervous strain of a first night , and largely because they are not obliged to keep themselves in such perfect training . To an actor a cold , an indigestion , or a headache is doubtless an annoyance ; but to a leading singer such an accident almost always means the impossibility of appearing at all , with serious loss of money to the artist , and grave disappointment to the public .