AN ACTRESS IN A SAD PLIGHT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVII, Issue 99, 28 April 1893, Page 4

AN ACTRESS IN A SAD PLIGHT

A New York actress named Isabelle Urquhart has just gone through a terrible and at the same time unique experience. Among her friends was a sculptor, who entreated her to allow r him to make a cast of her form. Yielding with her usual good nature to his request, she visited the studio, and in due time she was lying swathed in a shapeless mass of plaster weighing several hundred pounds. During the drying period the sculptor bethought himself that his beautiful model would have a keen appetite after getting out of the matrix. He told Miss Urquhart to lie perfectly still, and, locking the studio door, hurried to an adjacent caterer's to order a luncheon to te sent up. On the way back an old print shop attracted his attracted his attention, and with the absent-mindedness natural to artists he became immersed in a portfolio of fine engravings and quite forgot his model, his cast, and his luncheon. Meanwhile the pretty actress was lying helpless in his studio. IX A PREDICAMENT. At first she was amused by her novel predicament, but very soon she realised her discomforts. The mass of plaster by which she was enveloped was so heavy that she could neither move hand nor foot. She presently discovered to her alarm that one of the properties of plaster of Paris is to shrink in the process of drying. About the same time she realised appallingly that it possessed the characteristics of emitting great heat in becoming solidified. As is customary with sculptors' models for casting, the actress had been copiously greased from chin to toe with a shiny mixture of oil and tallow. The heat of the plaster, the grease, aud a warm spring day. combined with the natural glow of the lovely woman's body, soon transformed the huge matrix into [an oven, Miss Urquhart was used to both Turkish and Russian baths, but at that moment she began to feel as if she was threatened with the fate prepared for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In addition to its fiery heat the mould commenced to shrink surely by slowly, until the plaster, which had at first fitted comfortably around every curve in her form, now tightened in a vice-like grip from which there was no escape. After half aa hour of suffocation Miss Urquhart believed that the sculptor had been run over in the street, tried to scream, but could not expand her lungs sufficiently to gain breath for the vocal effort, gave up all hope ef rescue, and prepared to die. THE RULING PASSION. It would be a better advertisment for a comic opera divinity, she thought than any loss of diamonds, and she could already see columns intho morning paper recounting the tragic and unparalleled death of a well known actress. But, she considered ruefully, it wouldn't do her any good. " Better," she muttered faintly, " have life and Isodols a week than posthumous fame achieved by dying slowly and horribly in a sculptor's plaster matrix." Suddenly ;a knock was heard at the door and the almost unconscious young woman revived quickly with renewed hope of rescue. Miss Urquhart tried to call out, but the great mass of plaster clutched her bosom so firmly, that she could scarcely breath. The Wrappings still continued. It was the waiter with the luncheon. After pounding at the door for several minutes and yelling through the keyhole without hearing any response, he picked up his tray of dishes and returned to the caterers. Overcome by the horror of losing this last chance of release Miss Urquhart fainted. A few minutes later the sculptor returned, and was terrified to find his mo lei, as he supposed, dead, hastily seizing a hammer and chisel he chipped off the matrix and extricated the lovely woman. The cast was irretrievably spoiled. But neither the luncheon nor the sculptors ardent persuasions could induce Isabelle Urquhart to have another cast made of what he regarded as the most beautiful form on the stage of America.