oys me when
people laugh at me off the stage. If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask
somebody to pass the mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out
laughing. I don't want people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner.
I want my dinner. It makes me very angry sometimes."

"I know," agreed Dan, sympathetically. "The world never grasps the fact
that man is a collection, not a single exhibit. I remember being at a
house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew scholar.
One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one in a hurry,
let it slip out of her hand. 'Why is Miss Henman like a caterpillar?'
asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice. Nobody appeared to know.
'Because she makes the butter fly.' It never occurred to any one of us
that the Doctor could possibly joke. There was dead silence for about
a minute. Then our hostess, looking grave, remarked: 'Oh, do you really
think so?'"

"If I were to enter a room full of people," said the fishy-eyed young
man, "and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they
would think it the funniest story they had heard in years."

He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he
undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy.

"I am not a comic actor, really," he explained. "I could play Romeo, so
far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well. There is a fine
vein of poetry in me. But of course it's no good to me with this face of
mine."

"But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?" Dan replied. "There
is young Kelver here. At school it was always his trouble that he could
give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in the whole
school could do. His ambition was to kick a ball as well as a hundred
other fellows could kick it. He could tell us a good story now if he
would only write what the Almighty intended him to write, instead of
gloomy rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh caves. I don't
say it's bad, but a hundred others could write the same sort of thing
better."

"Can't you understand," answered the little man; "the poorest tragedian
that ever lived never wished himself the best of low comedians. The
court fool had an excellent salary, no doubt; and, likely enough, had
got two-thirds of all the brain there was in the palace. But not a
wooden-headed man-at-arms but looked down upon him. Every gallery boy
who pays a shilling to laugh at me regards himse