bottom of the screen.
"Here," said I, "we have the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress of London,
1300 A.D." At that moment the Mayor and Mayoress of the town, who, for
effect I suppose, had come in a quarter of an hour late to the seats
reserved for them in the centre of the hall, walked past the rays of the
lantern, and were of course projected on to the screen, unconsciously
burlesquing my picture, and causing an effect they had not anticipated.

I referred just now to mishaps that will occur with the best-regulated
lanterns. The gas, for instance, may become prematurely exhausted, which
necessitates a stoppage while the cylinders are being changed, and when
Rudyard Kipling's work, "The Light that Failed," was published, I
immediately sent for a copy, thinking that probably the author had tried
entertaining with the aid of the limelight in India and had had some
experience of this kind. I could give that clever author plenty of
material for another volume on "The Light that Failed"--a collection of
anecdotes connected with the magic lantern. But, as I said, it doesn't
so much matter to the entertainer as the lecturer, who must be _au
serieux_, and when I was a lecturer I felt any mishap of the kind very
keenly; but an entertainer is a privileged being, and can turn the
matter off with a joke at the expense of his manager, his gas-man, his
audience, or his subject. No less a personage than Sir William Harcourt
happened to be on the screen when my gas went out one evening in
Scotland. I had to retire from the platform while new cylinders of gas
were being adjusted, and when I made my reappearance I assured my
audience that it was probably the first occasion on which Sir William
had been put out for want of gas!

[Illustration: LATE ARRIVALS.]

I recollect, though, once at Bradford, where I was lecturing, the
audience were put out for want of it, for the operators supplied by the
association I was lecturing to were utterly incompetent. The gas was
bad, to begin with--it became small by degrees and beautifully less, and
suddenly went out altogether! So did the operators. They simply bolted
out of the hall, and left the lantern to manage itself.

CHAIRMEN.

Du Maurier made a delightful drawing for _Punch_ of a sandwich
advertising contractor dismissing a man with a board on which was the
letter H. "Now, look 'ere, you H! The public don't want yer, nor _I_
don't, nor nobody don't--so 'ook it!" Or something to that effe