sang them we might have been modern Joshuas,
thinking to capture a city with our breath.

'And then that wonderful view we used to see from its dingy window
panes--that golden country that lay stretched before us, beyond the
thousand chimney pots, above the drifting smoke, above the creeping
fog--do you remember that?'

It was worth living in that cramped room, worth sleeping on that knobbly
bed, to gain an occasional glimpse of that shining land, with its marble
palaces, where one day we should enter, an honoured guest; its wide
market-places, where the people thronged to listen to our words. I have
climbed many stairs, peered through many windows in this London town
since then, but never have I seen that view again. Yet, from somewhere
in our midst, it must be visible for friends of mine, as we have sat
alone, and the talk has sunk into low tones, broken by long silences,
have told me that they, too, have looked upon those same glittering
towers and streets. But the odd thing is that none of us has seen them
since he was a very young man. So, maybe, it is only that the country is
a long way off, and that our eyes have grown dimmer as we have grown
older.

'And who was that old fellow that helped us so much?' I ask of my little
pink friend; 'you remember him surely--a very ancient fellow, the oldest
actor on the boards he always boasted himself--had played with Edmund
Kean and Macready. I used to put you in my pocket of a night and meet
him outside the stage door of the Princess's; and we would adjourn to a
little tavern in old Oxford Market to talk you over, and he would tell
me anecdotes and stories to put in you.'

'You mean Johnson,' says the pink imp; 'J. B. Johnson. He was with you
in your first engagement at Astley's, under Murray Wood and Virginia
Blackwood. He and you were the High Priests in "Mazeppa," if you
remember, and had to carry Lisa Weber across the stage, you taking her
head and he her heels. Do you recollect what he said to her, on the
first night, as you were both staggering towards the couch?--"Well, I've
played with Fanny Kemble, Cushman, Glyn, and all of them, but hang me,
my dear, if you ain't the heaviest lead I've ever supported."'

[Illustration: 'HE AND YOU HAD TO CARRY LISA WEBER ACROSS THE STAGE']

'That's the old fellow,' I reply; 'I owe a good deal to him, and so do
you. I used to read bits of you to him in a whisper as we stood in the
bar; and he always had one formula of praise