e which spoke his
unrelenting nature. At last came one intolerable, awful moment, when the
hopeless Jim could prompt no longer. The prompter was at his post, but
took no earthly notice of the scene. He had witnessed the rehearsal and
was taking things easily. There was nothing else for it. I walked across
to him and asked him for the line, received it, and spoke it with
a biting scorn which nipped my confederate to the quick. I was
congratulated on that unwilling walk across the stage afterwards by an
old hand who was present at this first appearance of mine. He told me
that the pause, the walk, the turn, and the indignant scorn with which
the words were spoken had impressed him greatly, and had assured him
that I was a born actor. But by that time I had found the courage of
desperation, and all my fears had melted into thin air. The words of the
subsequent acts came readily, and before the last curtain fell I was as
much at home as I had ever found myself on the lecture platform.

XI

Amongst actors one finds some of the queerest people in the world. The
men of the modern school are very much like other people; but the old
stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as
Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued
to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one
elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort
of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief
exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly
comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the
footlights. At breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner, he played to the
public of the hotel coffee-room. In the street he played to his
fellow-promenaders. He played, and played hard, in the simplest private
conversation. He had no more sense of moral responsibility than a
butterfly. He was as admirable a stage liar, or nearly, as Mr. Hawtrey
is; and off the stage he was as free from the trammels of veracity as he
was when on it He could promise, explain, evade, as dexterously in
his own person as in the character of Lord Oldacre or Greythorne or
Hummingtop. The world to him was literally a stage, and all the men and
women merely players. Old age will teach him no sadness. He will play at
being old. Death will have none of its common terrors for him. He will
play at dying. When last I heard of him I was told that h