, where he earned seven shillings
per week in good times: the restraints of respectability were to hamper
him no more. Through all his miserable wanderings I tracked him, for he
kept playbills, and each bill suggested some quaint or sordid memory. I
felt something like a lump in my throat when he said, "Now, dear friend,
at this place I played once the 'The Stranger' and 'The Idiot Witness,'
and for two days my comrade and I had nothing to eat. On one eventful
night we saw some refuse fish being wheeled off in a barrow, and we
begged leave to abstract a fish, which was--I say it without fear of
contradiction--the knobbiest and scaliest member of the finny tribe.
Sir, we tried to skin this animal and failed. Then we scraped him, and
the moving question arose, What about fire? Luckily the landlady had
left a lamp on the stairs. My inventive faculties were bestirred. The
LAMP! No sooner said than the fish was placed on the fire-shovel, and we
then took turns to move the shovel backwards and forwards over the lamp.
Regardless of that woman's loud inquiries about the smell, which was in
truth, sir, very overpowering, we pursued our joint labours until two in
the morning, and then the brute was only _half_ raw. One penknife was
our sole cutlery; but we managed to cut through the skin, and we
devoured the oily stuff like famished hounds, sir. We were ashamed; but,
as the poet truly observes, 'Necessity knows no law,' and we endured the
scurrilous language of the woman when, on the morrow, she found the
bottom of the shovel encrusted with dirt and the top thickly coated with
grease. That fish saved us, sir."

Little by little Devine worked his way towards London, and at length he
appeared in a West-end theatre. His reminiscences of the stars are
impressive, but we need not deal with them; it is enough to say that he
was successful--and in light comedy no less. About this time he began to
have his photograph taken very frequently, and the portraits made me
feel sad. This dull, sodden man was once a handsome fellow, alert, well
poised, brave and cheerful. The profile which I saw in the photographs
somehow made me think of an arrow-head on the upward flight; that, lower
jaw, which is now so flabby and slobbery was once well rounded, and the
weakness was not unpleasantly evident. I often wonder that human vanity
has not done away with alcoholism. Men are vain animals, yet a
good-looking fellow, who could never pass a mirror without