On March 1858, Ada Menken sat on a steamer just outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana, writing a letter to her sister-in-law, Rosina, whom she had yet to meet. Her script scrawled thin and skittish across the page. “My dear Sister,” she began, “Do not think our long silence neglect, it cannot be that when we talk of you everyday and love you so dearly.” At the moment she traveled alone, she explained, because “‘our’ dear Alex left Nashville two weeks before I did and has gone to Shreveport and made the arrangements for me to play there a few weeks.” She added, “I was obliged to leave the [New Orleans] Gaiety Theatre in consequence of nonpayment where I am now going we can make more and be far more comfortable.